Network Cards - 12.2 install

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I am in a loop.

Installing 12.2. All goes well until I get to the networking part. The box has a wlan nic and a cable nic.

I have Network Manager disabled and IPV6 disabled. There is a comment next to the option to enable Netwrk Manager that says to use traditional ifup. I previous releases, this option was given on a per NIC basis.

I don’t want the wlan card at the moment so I “delete” it to put it into unconfigured state. The cable NIC I configure as DHCP, starting on cable plug with ifup priority = 1.

Now, we get to the “Test the connection” bit and it fails. Why? Well, the logs tell me that “interface managed by Network Manager - Skipping”!

If I tell it use Network Manager, that simply fails.

I carry on with the install but, of course no updates etc.

When the system boots to gui at the end. The cable NIC is up and running.

#2

Sorry, posted that a bit early.

In the GUI, the Network Manager icon is present!

In 11.4, I could set it up so that if the wlan nic could log in to the AP, then it would otherwise the cable nic would come alive if it was plugged in. I did this by putting priority 1 to the cable and 2 to the wlan.

I don’t want Network Manager involced since the box is intended to be used by a 6 year old.

#3

Sorry, that I do not remember the details, but I have some notes on my 12.2 installation

I have a cabled and a wifi in the system. I never used the wifi. The notes say:
After reboot

Host and Domain name: filled that in and unchecked Change Hostname via DHCP (not using DHCP)

Network Configuration
Network mode: ifup
Support for IPv6: enabled
> Network settings

Network Settings
where I fill in for eth0 (not using DHCP, I hve to provide everything there) and DNS

Test Internet Connection
Goes OK.

I know you have some parameters different, but may be this helps. I have btw nothing on priority and can not even remember I saw such a parameter.

#4

Hallo Henk.

Yes, I see what you did and it should work fine. There must be many situation where you would use your cable in one LAN and the wireless in the other.

The priority thing is for ifup. If you have 2 (or more) NICs, you might be wanting them on the same network - like one is cable and one is wifi so you use the cable at home but the wifi at the library or somewhere. In this case, it wants to use only one card so it wants to know that in the case where it could activate both, which one should it use exclusively.

If you set both to priority zero, then it might get confused if both could be brought up. I don’t know. I use the cable at home and the wifi at my daughter’s (she abhors cables!).

Later on, I tried to fix things but it has ended up that when it detects the cable, all oes smoothly (it gets a DHCP address etc) but ends with the firewall logging that it is setting wlan0 to external zone! Despite ifconfig, route and /etc/resolv.conf looking great, the cable NIC remains inoperable.

At the moment, I have restarted the entire install. Will keep the forum posted.

Cheers - AK

#5

Sorry Henk. The priority thing comes up in the “general” tab of editing the NIC. It’s where you tell it how you would like the NIC to be brought up. If you want “on cable plugin” then it’s a problem for ifup.

Cheers - AK

#6

Even if the priorities are the same, the wired interface will have priority over
the wireless. You need to set the wired one to activate the connection when the
cable is plugged, and the wireless on boot. When you plug the cable, the wired
one will connect.

If what you are calling the NetworkManager on the desktop is in the system tray
area, that is the NM applet. You can remove that.

As long as you will only connect to a single AP, ifup will work just fine;
however, if you need to connect to 2 or more, then the hassle of editing the
configuration files is too much. As long as your 6-year old will only be using
the wire, it should not be a problem. The switch between the wire, and the
wireless can be done by plugging the wire.

#7

I have it “on boot”, but it is a desktop and I never use the wifi.

I have also had a friend’s system, also a desktop, where I allways used the wifi, I guess thus “on boot” But I remember that on installation I took it down to his router and connected by cable . Then afterwards, I went to YaST and configured the wifi (in the beginning I even needed a wrapper for the driver for that). When it worked I set the wifi to “on boot” and the cable on “never”, thus keeping the configuration intact for usage when needed.

Your way of working, use the cable when it is connected, else use the wifi, is a rather normal one IMHO.
Maybe try some search on the forums (IIRC there were people asking for it and they got help). Or, maybe better, wait until someone with the same configuration comes to this thread :wink:

EDIT: As an aftherthought because you talk about the firewall, I have the firewall switched off. I trust my router as a network firewall. But I know that is not to everybody’s liking.

#8

finger. I didn’t know that.

What I am looking to get is that when he is with me, I want his laptop to use the cable only. When he is back with his mother, he can use the wifi.

I set up an old laptop for him that works fine this way and has 11.4 installed. It turns out that this laptop doesn’t have the oomph to play DVDs without an amount of lagging. I have recently aquired another one that I installed 11.4 on and it plays DVDs just fine.

For other reasons, I had to re-install that box but ran into problems trying to install 11.4 on it (the DVD is now “broken”) so I am trying 12.2.

Cheers - AK

#9

Well. Now it is still failing.

It now says that “sorry, there is already an instance of ifplugd for eth0 running”.

Right now, I am at a loss. It’s late, I’m going to sleep!

It’s so frustrating. 11.4 did the thing as advertised. Arrrrgggghhhhh!.

Cheers - AK

#10

On 02/12/2013 03:26 PM, antttikutoja wrote:
>
> Well. Now it is still failing.
>
> It now says that “sorry, there is already an instance of ifplugd for
> eth0 running”.
>
> Right now, I am at a loss. It’s late, I’m going to sleep!
>
> It’s so frustrating. 11.4 did the thing as advertised. Arrrrgggghhhhh!.

That is a meaningless error. If you configure it the way I said, you never need
to use ifup. Just reboot once. I have done this many times with 12.2.

#11

lwfinger. Yes! That’s what I thought also.

I tried to fix things up post-install but still no joy. I notice in the logs a load of error messages mentioning network manager!

I have just re-done the install and, this time, made no changes to the config of the wired connection. That is, I put it “on boot” after disabling netmanager and ipv6. I recall that I had tried “on plug” and then “on boot” after that failed.

This time, it brought up the card and things are progressing normally. Will post again if anything weird happens.

Cheers - AK

#12

Right.

Using another box with a cable nic and a wireless nic and experimenting with various combos of “boot” and “hotplug”.

Basically, if both networks are available both are brought up but the default route goes to the cable rather than the wireless. Since the wireless has the better bandwidth, it “should” be the choice but…

If I disconnect the cable after both nics have been set up, I lose the default route (dhcpd removes it) effectively killing the network. It would be good if the “underware” would re-assign the default route to the nic that is up still. After 1-15 minutes, still no default route. It only comes back if I plug the cable in again.

If I use the ifplgd priority and both nets are available, it does seem to bring up the nic that has the highest priority. Certainly what I saw from the logs is that when it comes to doing the wlan, it saw that it had a lower priority than the cable and didn’t bring it up.

With the box which was the subject of the original post, I have added the wlan nic after all the installation. The system attempts to bring it up but it is failing to authenticate. Its ifcfg-wlan0 is identical (a copy) of the one used on the box that is working fine but still it wont authenticate.

Will try searching the forum, maybe I’m missing something.

#13

On 02/16/2013 06:26 AM, antttikutoja wrote:
>
> Right.
>
> Using another box with a cable nic and a wireless nic and experimenting
> with various combos of “boot” and “hotplug”.
>
> Basically, if both networks are available both are brought up but the
> default route goes to the cable rather than the wireless. Since the
> wireless has the better bandwidth, it “should” be the choice but…

Are you sure that the wireless has better bandwidth? The only way that would
happen is if you have hardware from 1990 with 10 Mbps capability. Yes, wireless
might have 300 Mbps capability, but that is half-duplex so the throughput is cut
in half. In addition, the switch in your router gives you a private wired
connection, while wireless bandwidth is shared among all the users. Using iperf
to test throughput against a local server - no WAN is involved - I get 94 Mbps
on my 100 Mbps connection. The best I have ever seen with a wireless connection
with 300 Mbps capability is 70 Mbps, and the usual rate is 40-50.

> If I disconnect the cable after both nics have been set up, I lose the
> default route (dhcpd removes it) effectively killing the network. It
> would be good if the “underware” would re-assign the default route to
> the nic that is up still. After 1-15 minutes, still no default route. It
> only comes back if I plug the cable in again.

With the wired nic set to be enabled “on boot”, the system is doing exactly what
it should. You want to set the wired connection to be enabled on cable
connection. One other consideration is that the system might fail to boot if the
wired NIC is set to activate on boot, and the wire is disconnected. It happened
to me.

> If I use the ifplgd priority and both nets are available, it does seem
> to bring up the nic that has the highest priority. Certainly what I saw
> from the logs is that when it comes to doing the wlan, it saw that it
> had a lower priority than the cable and didn’t bring it up.

I think you should set the wired iface to connect on cable connection, and the
wireless on boot, and only adjust the priorities if you have multiple devices of
the same kind.

> With the box which was the subject of the original post, I have added
> the wlan nic after all the installation. The system attempts to bring it
> up but it is failing to authenticate. Its ifcfg-wlan0 is identical (a
> copy) of the one used on the box that is working fine but still it wont
> authenticate.

Without logs, we will never be able to fix this. Some wireless devices in kernel
3.7 need different firmware than is provided by the kernel-firmware package. I
submitted the updated package to Factory, and I am assured that it will be in
12.3, but it is not there yet.