Network interface configuration problem on SUSE 9.1
 

I have a probelm with my network interface configuration. I have two network cards an ethernet and a Atheros WiFi mini-pci. Both were working fine until I started trying to reconfigure the network modes on my Win4Lin installation. This seems to have broken the network card configuration so that the Atheros card will not start on boot.

At boot time I get the message "No configuration for ath0". I get the same messge if I try

ifstatus ath0

However, the command:

ifup-dhcp ath0

starts the card and finds the ip address etc just fine.

I have tried removing the card in Yast2 and reconfiguring it from scratch but this does not solve the problem.

I am running SUSE 9.1 kernel 2.6.4 on an IBM T40 thinkpad.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Martin

Both will not see the DHCP server at boot. You need to disable one. It is a weird bug. I had the same problem. If you disable your eth0 or ethernet card from yast2 at boot and reboot your machine. Your wireless card should be recognized.

Make sure both the cards are configured via yast.

Thanks for the response but unfortunately that's not the problem. I have tried to reboot with eth0 disabled and I get exactly the same behaviour on ath0. Besides they were both working before on DHCP without a problem.

At this point everything has been configured using Yast.

There is clearly something in the configuration that is getting left around when Yast removes the interface and its messing things up when I reconfigure.

Can anyone tell me how the interface names (ath0, eth0) are linked to their configurations - this seems to be where things are breaking.

OK I think I have figured out what is missing from the configuration. In /sys/class/net/ath0 there should be some softlinks called device and driver that point to the relevant device and driver. I can see where these nee to go to (I think) but for some reason I can't write to this part of the file system, even as root...can anyone tell me why?

Thanks...

Problem solved...the Win4Lin kernel is missing some features in the SUSE standard kernel these include support for mod_md (or is it md_mod) which I gather is used in device configuration and mapping. Rebooting with the SUSE kernel and the yast configuration worked as expected...

Thanks again