Belkin wlan problem with Breezy

[brian fergusson]

On Sun, 2005-11-20 at 17:58 +0100, Henk Koster wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 09:17:50 +0100, brian wrote:
> 
> > Hello All: just got Breezy running on my hpominbook xe4100 notebook.
> > It's great - all's fine except my belkin pcmcia card. wlan0 won't come
> > up. Here's what I get: ndiswrapper installs fine but 'sudo ifup wlan0'
> > gives:
> > 
> > brian at thefergies:~$ sudo ifup wlan0
> > Password:
> > Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :
> >     SET failed on device wlan0 ; No such device.
> > There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.wlan0.pid with pid 0
> > Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.2
> > Copyright 2004 Internet Systems Consortium.
> > All rights reserved.
> > For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP
> > 
> > sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
> > SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
> > wlan0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
> > wlan0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
> > sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
> > Bind socket to interface: No such device
> > Failed to bring up wlan0.
> > 
> > /etc/network/interfaces:
> > 
> > brian at thefergies:~$ sudo cat /etc/network/interfaces
> > # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
> > # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
> > 
> > # The loopback network interface
> > auto lo
> > iface lo inet loopback
> > 
> > # This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
> > # They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
> > mapping hotplug
> >         script grep
> >         map eth0
> > 
> > # The primary network interface
> > iface eth0 inet dhcp
> > 
> > iface wlan0 inet dhcp
> > wireless-essid easynote
> > #iface wlan0 inet static
> > #wireless-channel 11
> > #wireless-mode managed
> > #wireless-rate 11M
> > #wireless-key 1234567890
> > #wireless-txpower 20
> > #address 192.168.1.33
> > #netmask 255.255.255.0
> > #gateway 192.168.1.1
> > 
> > auto eth0
> > 
> > auto wlan0
> > 
> <snip>
> 
> If you want to start your network manually with "sudo ifup ... " then you
> shouldn't start the eth0 and wlan0 interfaces automatically, so remove the
> two lines starting with "auto  ... " in your interfaces file.
> 
> You may wish to look at the "network-manager" package. Do you find that
> hotplug takes a long time during boot to configure the eth0 interface when
> not connected... then also comment out the line in the interfaces file
> with "map eth0".
> 
Thanks for the reply Henk: Here's what happens after I've commented out
auto wlan0 from /etc/network/interfaces:

brian at thefergies:/media/cdrom$ sudo ndiswrapper -i Bel6020.inf 
Installing bel6020
brian at thefergies:/media/cdrom$ ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bel6020 driver present, hardware present 
brian at thefergies:/media/cdrom$ sudo ifup wlan0
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.wlan0.pid with pid 0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.2
Copyright 2004 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:30:bd:4e:33:d6
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:30:bd:4e:33:d6
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 15
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

brian at thefergies:/media/cdrom$ sudo ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:9F:0A:A1:0B  
          inet addr:192.168.1.33  Bcast:192.168.1.255
Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::2c0:9fff:fe0a:a10b/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:9702 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:6665 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:10478890 (9.9 MiB)  TX bytes:540645 (527.9 KiB)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0x1c00 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:28331 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:28331 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:2897652 (2.7 MiB)  TX bytes:2897652 (2.7 MiB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:30:BD:4E:33:D6  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Memory:f800000-f800024 

It's not that I WANT to start the wlan0 with sudo ifup wlan0 - I do that
because it doesn't start automatically, even when I boot with the belkin
card installed. I've also noticed that after 'ifup wlan0' my keyboard
does strange things - some keys repeat endlessly although I'm not
touching the keyboard anymore and other times I press a key and there's
a few seconds wait till something happens. If I 'ifdown wlan0' and then
remove the belkin card the keyboard returns to normal. Could there be
some kind of irq conflict? I haven't a clue where to even start sorting
that in linux - could someone give me some ideas on that, please?
Thanks again
b