I've just installed Slackware 12, and for the first time am experimenting with this distro. Unfortunately I'm having troubles on 3 things which I've read around for solutions without success.

1) Boot sequence delays:
During the boot sequence, when it gets to "Triggering udev events:..." the system hangs for about 30secs before it continues to boot. No USB devices are connected, its just whats in the laptop (see bottom of post for setup.)

From what I've seen around, it's due to problems with udev configuring the hardware, however no solution seems to exist anywhere. Any help on this would be appreciated. The manual nor forums seem to suggest anything.

2) CD-ROM mounting:
Perhaps it's just me being dumb. But do I need to manually mount the CDROM each time I boot up? I thought it was one of the devices that would automount during startup. If not, then there's really actually no problem.

3) Wireless problems:
I posted on another thread under the appropriate topic, but figure I'd summarize it here too. iwconfig is acting bizarre. i.e. iwconfig wlan essid "Home" fails to change the essid setting, but doesn't give any error.

However, further testing found that if I ran iwconfig multiple times over the course of say 10 seconds, that iwconfig's output would yield essid as "off/any" sometimes and "Home" sometimes. Weird!?

If anyone is interested in helping with this problem, I can post output from ifconfig and iwconfig, as well as what I have entered in rc.inet1.conf and rc.wireless.conf.

Setup:
Fresh install of Slackware 12 on Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop
USB wireless key: DLink WUA-2340 using driver with ndiswrapper (+modprobe)
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/dell...-30418693.html

These 30 seconds delay are caused by the unsuccessful attempt to obtain an IP address for your net work interface. Try setting a smaller timeout for your card in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf: "DHCP_TIMEOUT[X]=10" for instance. The "X" is a number that you have to supply, it must match the number of the other configuration lines for your card. Like, if your card uses index 0, this section in rc.inet1.conf would become
This is expected behaviour. A CDROM drive never automounts at boot.

Can you show how you've setup your wireless? If you use /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf to store the settings, the Slackware boot scripts will setup and activate your card for you.
What I would do, is add a line of "/sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper" to the end of the file /etc/rc.d/rc.modules-<your_kernel_version> which for Slackware 12.0 would be the file "/etc/rc.d/rc.modules-2.6.21.5-smp", so that the ndiswrapper module is automatically loaded on time.
Then I would make my "/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf" file look like this (assuming the wireless card uses index "0" in that file):
(supply your own WEP key of course instead of my "D5A31F54ACF0487C2D0B1C10D2").

If your wireleless card is called something else than ethX (in case of the example that would be "etho") but, say, "wlan0", you would have to add another line to that:
If you use WPA encryption you would have to add yet another set of configuration lines, but I don't think you are using that.

Eric

Unfortunately I won't be around my laptop for a couple of days to test these out, but I can at least thank you for the information.

I'll reduce the DHCP timeout (logically makes sense to me,) and report back on that.

As for the CD-ROM problem.. eheheh: *cough*i'manewb*cough* .

As for the networking problem. Currently I have the module being loaded at startup already, however' I'm not sure if the module is being loaded pre or post rc.inet1. This could change some things. When I have a chance in the next couple of days to post the setup I will, but perhaps I could ask a few prelim clarification questions.

1: There's two files concering wireless, that of rc.inet1.conf and rc.wireless.conf. Now rc.inet1 uses rc.wireless.conf (as far as I know?) and I'm curious as to which file in particular I should use to store the wireless settings.

2: Given that I'm entering a specific essid, etc. Is it necessary that when I use a public wireless network, to setup separate iwconfig info?

3: My wireless card pops up as wlan0, so I'm assuming the index of the card is 0? Now, going off memory, I have something similar to what you've suggested (of course probably not exact), however I'm just curious as to why you have two different indexes listed, both 0 and 4?

i.e. why IFNAME[0] = "wlan0" and then further on WLAN_ESSID[4] = "Home" .

Thanks again for the help. I am in fact running WPA-PSK encryption, however I believe I have that line ok. Again, I'll post this info day after tomorrow, and feel free to wait till then before making a reply.

OK thanks for noticing my typo... the [4] should be [0] in the example. This would look better:
Note that the index [0] being used has nothing to do with the zero in the interface's "wlan0" name. The in rc.inet1.conf you can confuigure multiple network cards, and each card uses an index in thee file. So, your first card's configuration lines would use index "0", the next would use index "1" etc...
Usually index "0" is used for the first card found which is the wired card "eth0". In fact, if you leave out the "IFNAME[0]=wlan0", Slackware will assume you're talking about "eth0". Likewise for the other indexes.

If you use WPA encryption, it is easy to add that to rc.inet1.conf as well. If you tell me how you've set it up currentlyI can point you to the way to migrate that into rc.inet1.conf.

As for your question about rc.wireless.conf - you can use either rc.wireless.conf or rc.inet1.conf for storing your wireless configuration. The settings in rc.inet1.conf will have precedence however if you use both files.
Ultimately, the rc.wireless.conf file will cease being distributed with Slackware , although the support for it will never be removed. I think it is cleaner and clearer to have all the settings for a specific card (wireless and IP) in one file.

Eric

So I had written this huge long email about what I had tried, what wasn't working, etc, etc. However upon disabling all types of encryption, it works!!! You're a savior!!!

I'm not sure what part worked exactly since I've tried a couple of different things with your suggestions high in mind (especially about the index.)

I have a couple of questions then for clarification. My settings are:

You'll notice I had to add that freq setting. The rc.inet1 was giving a message about having to set it, so I winged it with one of its suggested settings of 2.4**

Now with the index. What do you mean by the order of detection of the network cards? Specifically, when does this detection occur? The reason I ask is because any other index other than 0, gave me a "No carrier detected on wlan0. Reducing DHCP timeout to 10 seconds" statement. My guess is the index is given when it's recognized by ifconfig (i.e. if ifconfig yields nothing, ifconfig eth0 up would give eth0 index 0, and ifconfig wlan0 up would give wlan0 index 1)??

Now this question really lies in making things automatic. Since I've used index 0 for the wireless card (IFNAME[0]...), if instead I take a wired connection, I found that the eth0 card will actually be skipped over, and the wlan0 will be checked anyways, without checking eth0 at all. I would have to remove that IFNAME statement in order to get the wired connection to be used.

Is there anyway to somehow ensure that my wireless card will take a different index? Is there some way of having it so the computer decides whether its the wireless or wired connection which is present?

Now, I also found that my encryption threw things out the door. You mentioned you might be able to help me out with this line if I had the settings. Well, here they are:

Encryption: WPA-PSK, TKIP cipher type, pass phrase is a string (and in the router settings (D-Link DI-624), there is none that allow you to enter the pass phrase in hex--I'll research this though. WEP however does allow you to enter the key as either hex or a string, however I understand WEP is less secure overall.)

And lastly. Thanks again for all your help. Definitely helped TONNES in getting the system up and running! It's nice to have a working network again (albeit a bit insecure at the moment .)

Still trying to grasp the linux system, and slackware is by far the most exciting (time consuming?) experience I've had so far. Next step... a pretty looking fluxbox and setting up/optimizing the rest of the system 0_o. Call that a new years goal.. maybe.

Coto

This worked for me:

add this line in rc.inet1.conf to your card section:
WLAN_WPA[0]="wpa_supplicant"

Next you need a wpa_supplicant.conf file in /etc. I don't remember if Slackware puts one in there on a stock install but look for one or check /usr/doc/wpa_supplicant-0.5.7/wpa_supplicant.conf.sample

You want a file that looks something like this:

You want to change the permissions on your new /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf to root only because it has your password in it. try chmod 600

Sorry for the late reply Sn9ke.

Thanks for the advice and it seems to be almost working, just not quite. In particular initially the settings were working, in that it was attempting to connect to the network (although still without success ). However after a reboot of the system, having WLAN_WPA[0]="wpa_supplicant" was giving errors:

which would repeat itself until Ctrl+C.

Any ideas? If I can at least get the setting working again, I can experiment with settings.

Thanks,
Cotobear

When you run "ps ax | grep wpa" do you see a wpa_supplicant process running? Did you actually create a correct /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file?

It would really help the troubleshooting process if you documented your settings instead of only writing "now it works, now it doesn't". I do not want to pull the stuff out of you. Please copy the relevant portions of your rc.inet1.conf and wpa_supplicant.conf (and mask any passphrases/private keys)

Eric

No offense, but it's difficult to see what is necessary and what is not necessary for someone to help when I'm not adept at the software being used. I understand these are some pretty basic questions, and I assumed that this stuff has already been mentioned in the thread.

That being said, here's what you've requested:

Output of ps ax | grep wpa:
rc.inet1.conf
wpa_supplicant.conf

You should uncomment the line #WLAN_WPA[0]="wpa_supplicant".

Brian

That's the line that is unfortunately causing the problems. It's only commented now since I'm just going off an unprotected network.

You don't have wpa running.

Btw, ps ax - shows all running processes, | - pipes the output of ps to grep, where grep searches this output for wpa.

You don't want to keep commenting and uncommenting this line. wpa_supplicant can also handle unprotected (and WEP) networks. That's why you have multiple network sections in your wpa_supplicant.conf.

Brian

I understand this. What I'm saying is that with that line uncommented, the device will not connect to any network, period. I get a repeated error message about failing to connect to wpa_supplicant instead of the device connecting to the (currently unprotected) network. So until I can solve the problem, it will have to be commented out.

Thanks Alien_Hominid. I guess that virtually solves my problem. Get an instance of wpa_supplicant running *before* starting rc.inet. Out of curiousity then, it'll be convenient to have it autostart at boot. Which rc.* file would be most convenient to put this in? I suppose it would have to run before rc.inet1.conf, however I'm not completely familiar in which order the bootup takes place.

That configuration line WLAN_WPA[0]="wpa_supplicant" makes wpa_supplicant start when you start the networking.
What you should do is some troubleshooting - see this section I wrote earlier: http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/...#wpa_debugging

However, before I spend any more time with this, I would really like to see at least some more diagnostics output from you: what are the results of the commands
Eric