iwl3945 always reports there is a link, even if it isn't associated with an AP. Impact ====== By default /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 contains: # Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection DEVICE=wlan0 ONBOOT=yes BOOTPROTO=dhcp HWADDR=00:19:d2:9f:8a:e3 During system startup, if the device reports a link, then dhclient attempts to obtain an address on that interface. As a result, iwl3945's erroneous reporting of a link causes the system startup to sit for a long time until the DHCP client timeout.
Are you still seeing this Warren? I didn't reproduce in a quick check with a laptop here.
Yes, this still stalls boot while it times out DHCP. It turns out that Jeremy hasn't been seeing it because he turned off service network.
I think this is caused by mac80211 drivers not supporting ethtool. This initscripts don't like this...well, they like it just fine -- it just doesn't produce the desired results. In this case, check_ethtool will return 2 (same as if ethtool was not installed). In turn, this causes check_link_down to return 1, the same as if either mii-tool or ethtool had said the link is up. So, ifup proceeds to call dhclient. I'm sure Bill will tell me that mac80211 needs to support ethtool -- worth contemplating, but not a slam dunk w/ the wireless developers. Another option might be to add support to check_link_down for using "ip link show". I'll attach an (untested) patch showing the basic idea while attempting to follow the existing network-functions style.
Created attachment 253681 [details] check_ip_link.patch Patch against /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/network-functions... Actually, I'm not sure why 'ip link show' isn't the gold standard for this check. The only reason I could think of would be if setting carrier state was not totally trusted either now or in the past. So, I coded the patch presuming that 'ip link show' would be a last resort, and would only matter if it actually showed "NO-CARRIER". Anyway, does this speed-up the boot process for you?
Having a third option is just silly - if we're going down that route, I might as well ditch them all and write something custom that just sits there chatting over netlink. Does checking for carrier work on all devices?
Created attachment 294833 [details] network-functions.patch Updated version of same idea -- this one seems to work better...
Note that wireless configs are not written with ONBOOT=yes for a while now. So, this probably isn't a severe issue any more.
The topic came-up as part of this thread: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-February/msg00938.html The OP never replied, so I don't know if it worked for him. As for me, I could not get "ifup wlan0" to work on ipw4965 w/o the patch from comment 6. With the patch, no problem...YMMV.
Changing version to '9' as part of upcoming Fedora 9 GA. More information and reason for this action is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
Since there are insufficient details provided in this report for us to investigate the issue further, and we have not received feedback to the information we have requested above, we will assume the problem was not reproducible, or has been fixed in one of the updates we have released for the reporter's distribution. Users who have experienced this problem are encouraged to upgrade to the latest update of their distribution, and if this issue turns out to still be reproducible in the latest update, please reopen this bug with additional information. Closing as INSUFFICIENT_DATA.