how do I switch between a pci and usb wifi adpters

rob.rice · 12-11-2009, 01:47 AM

the built in pci wifi is a G type my router is an N type that I would like to use at full speed
the usb wifi is an N type

I have the PCI wifi card working
I have the USB wifi card showing up in ifconfig ( this is nas far as I have
gotten so far with it
I think I need a script like /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 that tacks one card down
and brings up the other one maybe even 2 scripts one for each card I want to use
could I add it to /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf
like so
IFNAME[5]="ath0"
IPADDR[5]=""
NETMASK[5]=""
USE_DHCP[5]="yes"

jiobo · 12-11-2009, 03:57 PM

Take a look at iwconfig too.

Code:

man iwconfig

There should be two names for the wifi cards, probably wlan0 and wlan1. You can take a look at the output of ifconfig to see which ones are enabled by default on your system.

Code:

man ifconfig

You can edit the rc scripts to adjust what the default behaviour is. If both are running, and you open a web browser, you could need to configure the web browser to use a particular wifi card.

voyciz · 12-11-2009, 05:08 PM

Once you've used iwconfig to configure all network settings, such as essid/key/ap just:
$ killall dhcpcd && dhcpcd INTERFACE

rob.rice · 12-11-2009, 07:16 PM

I added the lines from my first post to /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf so that /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 configures both of them
then I use Wcid to switch between the 2 of them I manually set the interface in the preferences ath0 (usb ) wlan0 (pci)
just a slight delay at boot time while both wifi cards grab an IP address

BTW I used wiconfig to get the ath0 name for the usb wifi adapter

voyciz · 12-12-2009, 06:40 AM

Are you sure they're grabbing IP addresses at boot time? Maybe just looking for APs? Notice if you try to run dhcpcd again while it's already running, it will let you know there's a problem. I don't think it's designed to allow you to grab two IP addresses at once.

Erik_FL · 12-12-2009, 02:55 PM

You can also use commands like this.

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 ath0_stop
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 wlan0_start
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 wlan0_restart

I don't remember if you can put multiple options on each command. This might work.

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 ath0_stop wlan0_start

rob.rice · 12-14-2009, 12:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by voyciz

Are you sure they're grabbing IP addresses at boot time? Maybe just looking for APs? Notice if you try to run dhcpcd again while it's already running, it will let you know there's a problem. I don't think it's designed to allow you to grab two IP addresses at once.

ifconfig shows IP addresses for both cards

it's not the computer that gets the IP address it's the network interface that gets the address

the only problem I have had is when the usb card is unpluged the pluged back in I get a phcpd already running with PID number xxxxxx on device ath0
so I kill the PID number then rerun /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 and the usb card comes right back up

rob.rice · 12-14-2009, 12:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erik_FL

You can also use commands like this.

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 ath0_stop
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 wlan0_start
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 wlan0_restart

I don't remember if you can put multiple options on each command. This might work.

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 ath0_stop wlan0_start

Wicd dose the same thing by typing wlan0 or ath0 as the interface in the preferences