Wireless card no longer recognized in Linux
 

I am using a Toshiba laptop with a built-in wireless card. When I installed RedHat 9, it seemed to have found the wireless card and used it without problem for a couple of months. Now, while the card still works (I have tested it in my Windows partition), my Linux system does not appear to recognize it.

I can run kudzu to load the card, which loads an Intersil PRISM2 Wireless Adapter, but it gets loaded as an ethernet card, not a wireless card. This means that I cannot set up a new wireless connection with 'neat', because it recognizes it only as an ethernet card. I cannot even manually add the hardware, as that particular adapter is not listed.

When I do get something partially working, it seems that when I bring up the device, it gives me a message about how an 'orinoco_cs' device is not present. Also, if I try /sbin/ifup from command line, it says that there is no configuration present for eth1. Short of reinstalling RedHat 9, is there nothing I can do?

You could try editing (if it exists) the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1, if this line is not there add it: TYPE=Wireless, then try neat again, if that file does not exist and your wireless card is eth1, don't give up we can hand-build one.

I can set up my wireless device to be eth1, but if I try to bring it up with ifup, it gives me the same error message :

orinoco_cs device eth1 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.

Is the problem that the card is not identified correctly? In 'neat', two pieces of hardware appear to be added. One is the Intersil PRISM2 card, the other is a 'Lucent Orinoco and PrismII-based PCMCIA Wireless Adapter'. Of course, to further complicate things, Toshiba claims that the card is an Agere wireless adapter.

And you're positive this device was working? Are you sure maybe eth0 wasn't doing the work or was it not plugged in? If it was, what might have led up to it stopping?

I'm positive it worked because I had no cable plugged in to my ethernet card. Plus, to make a connection, I kept typing '/sbin/ifup eth1' and I even got stats on the card from /sbin/iwconfig. I'm sure it worked, but now the system believes that the device doesn't work as it should.

Well, that's good news, so right now are the modules loaded for it? type /sbin/lsmod and see if you see them in the list. then, what does /sbin/iwconfig show and also /sbin/ifconfig -a. if cardctl is working how about /sbin/cardctl ident also.

The modules are loaded, but neither iwconfig nor ifconfig list eth1 as a device.

could you please post the actual output of all those commands (make sure it's ifconfig -a)

Sure:

ifconfig -a:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:08:0D:DF:19:14
inet addr:24.66.19.95 Bcast:24.66.19.255 Mask:255.255.252.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:267350 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:108318 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:90223411 (86.0 Mb) TX bytes:14755161 (14.0 Mb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xcf40 Memory:cffff000-cffff038

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:523158 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:523158 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:35740674 (34.0 Mb) TX bytes:35740674 (34.0 Mb)

iwconfig:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

lsmod:

Module Size Used by Not tainted
wvlan_cs 29120 0 (unused)
defxx 14420 0 (unused)
orinoco_old_cs 43156 0 (unused)
i810_audio 27624 1 (autoclean)
ac97_codec 14568 0 (autoclean) [i810_audio]
soundcore 6404 2 (autoclean) [i810_audio]
orinoco_cs 5556 0 (autoclean) (unused)
orinoco 39724 0 (autoclean) [orinoco_cs]
hermes 8068 0 (autoclean) [orinoco_cs orinoco]
e100 54596 1 (autoclean)
i830 74336 1
agpgart 48128 12 (autoclean)
binfmt_misc 7432 1
lp 8996 0 (autoclean)
parport 37056 0 (autoclean) [lp]
autofs 13268 0 (autoclean) (unused)
ds 8680 0 [wvlan_cs orinoco_old_cs orinoco_cs]
yenta_socket 13504 2
pcmcia_core 57216 0 [wvlan_cs orinoco_old_cs orinoco_cs ds yenta_so
cket]

There's more, but this is about all that's important

It looks like *both* the wvlan_cs and the orinoco_cs modules are being loaded, it's got to be one or the other, do you know which one it is?

I could try both combinations, right? How do I remove one of them (and, for future reference, reload it)?

Well, you almost certainly need to know how they (actually, now I see 3 different modules loaded for this card in your list) came to be associated with your card, typically only one module (driver) gets associated with the card.

Yes, you can try them all:
first, let's remove all of them and put them back one at a time and see what works, so do these lines to remove them:
modprobe -r wvlan_cs
modprobe -r orinoco_old_cs
modprobe -r orinoco_cs

and then try:
modprobe orinoco_cs
watch the lights on your card as you do this if you see something encouraging do ifconfig -a and see if eth1 or wlan0 shows up

No, eth1 still doesn't show up, and I still get the same error from neat if I try to bring it up there.

'orinoco_cs device eth1 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.'