Wireless Card Issue AFTER Install

[Craig Booth]

Anton, thank you for taking time to help.  I have answered your questions
within your text at the bottom of this email as best as I know how to as a
raw BSD Unix user.

-----Original Message-----
From: Anton Alin-Adrian [mailto:aanton at reversedhell.net] 
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2004 4:18 PM
To: Craig Booth
Cc: freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Wireless Card Issue AFTER Install

Craig Booth wrote:
> Any guru out there that has the knowledge to provide some advice to
persist the use of the Linksys card beyond the first install?  I tried this
question on the Questions mailing list, but no one could tackle it,
unfortunately.

Situation:
 
I have set up my Sony VAIO PCG-FRV27 laptop as a dual boot machine between
Win XP Pro and FreeBSD.  
 
I am using a Linksys Wireless card connecting through a Linksys router.  
 
My install successfully enabled and used the wireless card and router to
install directly from the FreeBSD ftp site (after CD boot) and completed
with no errors. 
 
Even though my rc.conf file is verified as setup with "DHCP" and the pccard
enabled, and even though the startup processes appear to find and enable the
card ok, I can't connect back to the ftp site to download more stuff unless
I use the CD to restart the install over the ftp site again.  It either
can't resolve the ftp site, or hangs during the attempt.
 
I have read where this can sometimes happen with dual boot machines when the
other OS doesn't properly release the card, but I have tried unplugging the
machine, removing and putting back both the card and the laptop battery
before rebooting, and it still doesn't work.  I am getting the [Null] [Null]
message after the Linksys Card Found message during startup, as my earlier
reading about the problem discussed, but nothing seems to change that,
unless I reinstall FreeBSD from the CD (which I'm obviously not going to do
everytime I want to use FreeBSD!)  
 
Two things I notice when I go to set up the media in SYSINSTALL.  The
gateway address (192.168.2.1) and the DHCP assigned address (range starting
with 192.168.2.2), both present on this same screen when booting from the
CD, are missing from the DHCP config screen that comes up just before
SYSINSTALL attempts to connect to the ftp site, though the connection
attempt still fails if I enter the info back in manually before trying to
connect.  Also, a message comes up before that which says something about
being in multiuser mode, and ask if I want to assume network settings are
already correct.  (or something like that)  This multiuser message is not
present when booting from the CD.>
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> 
Hi, could you please provide a bit more info?

What is the model of your Linksys card?

Answer: Linksys Instant Wireless Network PC Card WPC11 V3.0

and what driver are you using for it?

Answer: Win XP:  Intersil islp2 version 2.0.10.0
	  FreeBSD:  Intersil Firmware:  Primary 1.01.00, Station 1.04.02 (as
reported by FreeBSD)

Is it supported on the FreeBSD hardware list?

Answer: Yes

How do you configure your wireless driver? Using what software/scripts? 
Don't skip details please.

Answer: No software scripts, none that I initiated anyway.  The wireless
card is configured through the wi0 (Lucent WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11 wireless
adapter) choice, since that was the only wireless adapter selection
available on the SYSINSTALL menu.  Again, it worked for the initial install,
and when I try other choices, the logon scripts change it back to wi0
anyway, since that's apparently being picked up on auto-detection.  Here are
excerpts from the logon messages that may answer your questions, as well as
provide a bit more insight:

Apr 3 18:06:11 pccardd[49]:Card "The Linksys Group, Inc."(" Instant Wireless
Network PC Card")[ISL37300P][RevA] matched "The Linksys Group, Inc."("
Instant Wireless Network PC Card")[(null)][(null)]
.
.
.
login: wi0 at port 0x240-0x27f irq11 slot 0 on pccard0
wi0: 802.11 address:00:06:25:15:f9:34
wi0: using RF:PRISM3(PCMCIA)
wi0: Intensil Firmware: Primary 1.01.00, Station 1.04.02

Apr 3 18:06:16 pccardd[49]:wi0: The Linksys Group, Inc."(" Instant Wireless
Network PC Card inserted.

Apr 3 18:06:25 pccard[49]: pccardd started


Trying a non-DHCP config for testing might help. See if you can ping. Can
you ping your own IP of the wireless card, locally? 

Answer: I pinged 192.168.2.100 successfully.  However, I'm not sure how to
find out the local address of the card, as 192.168.2.100 was what DHCP
assigned, I believe.

Can you ping the broadcast IP for it?

Answer: If this is what I think you mean, it's the http://68.168.1.42 IP?
No, it can't ping that IP.  Furthermore, it can't ping anything on the
outside, including DSN name http://www.FreeBSD.org or anything else.  I also
tried pinging an IP directly (http://216.136.204.117 is the FreeBSD site IP)
and that failed as well.  The message during ping failure is:

Ping:sendto:No route to host

Is there any firewalling capability in your kernel/loaded modules?

Answer: I have only loaded the FreeBSD standard i386 kernel and any modules
that come standard.  I have not loaded any extra software at this point
until I get a good baseline.

I assume the card is working neat on XP. 

Answer: Yes, flawlessly.

Have you tried it after rebooting freebsd without actually going into XP? 

Answer: Yes, I have tried that and it acted no differently (still failed.)

XP may set up some BIOS parameters which FreeBSD doesn't like?

Answer: As I mentioned in the first email, I tried booting fresh right to
FreeBSD without first going to Win XP, and did so after removing and putting
back the laptop's power cord and battery.

...Thanks again for you help, and I'm looking forward to some more follow-up
on this, as I'm stumped.

Kindest regards,

Craig
---------------------------------------------------------

Regards,

-- 
Alin-Adrian Anton
Reversed Hell Networks
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