LINUX.IE, website of the Irish Linux Users' Group
Tux rules!

   
Home
New Users
Articles
Download
Projects
Community
Vendors

  Print Version
Email to...
 
Archives:


planetILUG

Recent News

News Archive


Join the
ILUG
on FaceBook


Join the
ILUG
on LinkedIn


Join the
ILUG SETI
Group



















 
 :: Mailing Lists

[ILUG] Re: Strange problem with WiFi cards

[ILUG] Re: Strange problem with WiFi cards

Gavin McCullagh ilug_gmc at fiachra.ucd.ie
Sat Mar 26 12:13:24 GMT 2005


In gmane.user-groups.linux.ilug.general, you wrote:

> I have two identical WiFi cards (Orinoco Gold PCMCIA cards).
> I use one in my laptop all the time, and it works perfectly.
> I thought I would try the other this evening,
> but for some reason it would not connect to my desktop.

Sounds from your general description that the card appears to be working,
ie the driver is installed and the card is configured.  If this is not the
case, that's clearly your problem.  However: 

> It is as though Linux somehow takes my usual card as default,
> though I don't find anything anywhere to specify that.

That's probably a routing issue.  If you have two network interfaces
enabled, linux (or any OS for the matter) has to figure out which interface
to use to connect to a given resource.  Generally there is a "default
route" setting which sets which interface to use by default.  If your
regular wired network interface is enabled and set as default route, it'll
be sending all requests down that.

The solution is to do either of:

1. set the wifi one as defaultroute
2. disable (not uninstall) your wired network card.

You're using Fedora so I'm not totally sure how this is done.  However, I'd
imagine if you route around in the network settings you may see the two
cards listed.  If you do, you should be able to disable one or set the
default route.

On the command line, you could type "/sbin/ifconfig" to see which
interfaces are active and "/sbin/route" to see the routing table.  The
latter's output should include a line which begins "default" and ends with
the interface, likely either "eth0" or "wlan0".  You can temporarily
disable the eth0 interface with "ifconfig eth0 down" (nb remove the
inverted commas). 

> I'm using dhcp, and have even specified the MAC address of the second
> card in /etc/dhcpd.conf on the desktop, but this seems to have no effect.

Well, if the info never gets to the server this obviously will not help.

> I'm disappointed that WiFi seems so much more difficult to configure
> under Linux than under Windows.

On this occasion, I don't think wifi is the problem (though for certain
cards wifi setup is indeed a PITA in linux :-).  It's a general two network
interfaces problem.  I guess Win2k has either got the other interface
disabled or guessed the default route somehow.

Gavin

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://mail.linux.ie/pipermail/ilug/attachments/20050326/5fbb0b20/attachment.pgp


More information about the ILUG mailing list
Read this without the formatting.
                                                                                                    

 

Hosted by HEAnet


Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by Dell. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds, used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance of this highly praised website. Looking for the Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!
RSS Version
Powered by Dell