Finally finished configuring my wireless-G adapter using ndiswrapper and wpa_supplicant to allow WPA-PSK encryption. Good network throughput, even with the encryption.

Everything works fine except ntp time synchronization. It works fine using eth0, but when I restart and use wlan0 ntpd will start but will not use the time servers listed in /etc/ntp.conf

(I use rc.local to modprobe ndiswrapper, then start wpa_supplicant, followed by dhcpcd -N wlan0, the -N telling the system not to replace the ntp.conf file)

So, everything should be fine, but no go. Ntpdate, for setting the time once, works. As a test, I shut off the encryption and ran wlan0 without wpa_supplicant, thinking there might be a conflict with NTP, but still no go with the NTP.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Gary

There really shouldn't be any difference between eth0 and wlan0. From the computer's point of view they are all just ethernet devices. The only thing I can think of is that your firewall has some eth0 specific rules that are causing trouble.

It sounds like the script that starts ndiswrapper might be starting after the script that does the ntp lookup. I believe that rc.local is executed last. Which means that when you are using ndiswrapper it tries to look up the ntpdate before you have an internet connection.

If you place the call to your ntp script to rc.local after the ndiswrapper script you should be good to go

Fixed the problem.

I load /usr/sbin/ntpd -p /var/run/ntpd.pid near the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.M after it calls for rc.inet1 or rc.local to run. When I am using eth0 with rc.inet1 set to start, it starts up the loopback network interface.

When I was setting up my wireless and getting the bugs in ndiswrapper and later, wpa_supplicant (for WPA-PSK encryption) worked out, I would chmod -x rc.inet1 and chmod +x rc.local where I would added : modprobe ndiswrapper, tell wpa_supplicant to start, followed by dhcpcd wlan0.

Found out ntpd was actually running and functioning properly per the ntp.log file, but without the loopback in place, could not view the output of ntpq -pn since loopback was not being started (due to rc.inet1 being down)

Found this out by leaving rc.inet1 up and disconnecting the ethernet cable. Then the loopback came up and I could view ntp operation using wlan0 just like before using eth0.

So, I added the loopback code from rc.inet1 and put in at the end of rc.local after dhcpcd starts wlan0, which is before rc.M called for ntpd to start.

This saves me from having to run rc.inet1 if it's not needed.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions over the last few days, concerning wireless networking and the needed kernel recompiling for wireless support. Slackware is truly a marvelous distro for forcing you to learn, if you just take the time.

Take care,
Gary