Suse 8.1 MELCO problem

[David Gibson]

On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 02:26:14PM -0000, Anthony Culligan wrote:
> I have installed wireless network cards on two hosts and wish to
> communicate on an ad hoc basis.  The first works perfectly.  The second
> not at all - although it communicates well when I dual boot the second
> machine under Windows98.  I am using MELCO pcmcia cards.  On removing
> and then replacing the cards, I can examine the /var/log/messages file
> and observe that there are differences in how the cardmgr loads the
> required modules. Both hosts identify the card correctly as MELCO
> WLI-PCM-L11.  On the first host, the card 'looks like a Lucent/Agere
> firmware version 6.04'.  On the second host (the one that does not work)
> I see a similar message but the version is '6.08'.  This is
> regardless

So, you're saying that either card reports as firmware version 6.04 on
one host, but as version 6.08 on another?

That's extremely bizarre.

> of which card I actually insert in the slot.  The second host then has
> an additional message in the initialisation - 'IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc
> mode supported'  Subsequently, the second host has numerous messages
> stating that 'eth0: this firmware requires an ESSID in IBSS-Adhoc mode'
> followed by a timeout message.   The wilist and wiconfig utilities work
> well on the first host but appear not to on the second host.  I have
> tried setting ESSID to 'any' using YasT2 (SuSe graphical config tool)
> but it does not have any impact.  Running a wiconfig command shows the
> frequency at 42.6GHz.  iwconfig commands to change the frequency,

Yes - by "must set ESSID", the message means that the firmware can't
cope with ESSID "any" in (IBSS) ad-hoc mode.  However it's not clear
that IBSS ad-hoc mode is really supported by this card - it should be
supported by firmware versions 6.06 and later, but it looks like the
firmware version might be misreported (I've never heard of version
6.08 vefore).

> channel and to set the ESSID to 'any' seem to have no effect.  Running
> wilist to view available frequencies or channels states that there are
> no options. A further difference between the two machines on hotplug is
> that whilst they both appear to load the same modules, the first machine
> does a check and then a modprobe whilst the second machine simply
> executes a series of insmod commands loading the modules from the
> /lib/modules/2.4.19-4GB//pcmcia-external/.  The modules loaded are
> orinoco_cs, orinoco and hermes.
>  
> Any ideas?
>  

-- 
David Gibson			| For every complex problem there is a
david at gibson.dropbear.id.au	| solution which is simple, neat and
				| wrong.
http://www.ozlabs.org/people/dgibson