Ok it’s time for me to admit defeat & post again…
This is several issues rolled into one that all affect each other.
My wireless drivers module does not load on startup. I cannot figure out how to get it to.
knetworkmanager runs on startup and I cannot figure out how to stop this from happening.
I am trying to run a network manager called Wicd that apparently conflicts with the network manager service.
At first the only way I could connect wirelessly was through knetworkmanager. It runs on startup but since my wireless drivers aren’t loaded, I had to exit knetworkmanager, su in a terminal, modprobe ath_pci, then run knetworkmanager, and it would connect successfully (although it continuously spits out error / warning messages in the terminal that didn’t seem to affect performance). After everything I have tried, however, knetworkmanager now drops the connection after about ten seconds without fail every time I use it to connect.
I tried to install Wicd, and followed the instructions here Wicd on FC9 - Wicd Wiki but when I go to disable the networkmanager in the system services section in yast, it says the following additional services must be stopped: nfs, smartd, postfix, portmap, cups, cron, bluetooth, avahi-dnsconfd, autoyast, auditd, sshd, avahi-daemon, SuSEfirewall2_setup, syslog. Some of those aren’t essential (such as bluetooth) but I don’t really think I should stop cron or syslog.
But to get Wicd running I still have to run “service network stop” which stops the networkmanager service. How can I remedy this? I’m kind of at a loss here.
I uninstalled knetworkmanager (networkmanager-kde in yast) so it does not boot anymore. I set my eth0 and ath0 to ‘traditional method with ifup’ instead of ‘user controlled with networkmanager’. Now when I boot, knetworkmanager doesn’t start and I think that’s the only way to get it to stop. ath_pci is still not loaded on boot. If I run #service network status it lists lo and eth0.
Wicd is set to run on boot but fails from runlevel 5 and I have no idea why. After startup, I have to go to a terminal, run /etc/init.d/wicd stop (kill the wicd daemon), then modprobe ath_pci, then I can run wicd_client (which automatically starts the wicd daemon and opens the gui for those of you who don’t use this app), and then Wicd works fine. This doesn’t make any sense to me. It runs fine so why would it fail on startup???
Where are lo and eth0 loaded from?? Can I tell it to load ath_pci in the same place?
Is this a desktop or laptop. Are the drivers for you Linux distro? I had to use ndiswrapper and use a windows driver for my wireless card, PCMCIA card. After that, I just configured in yast and everything is great, I think.
This is for a laptop. My wireless drivers are working fine. I am just trying to get them to be loaded on startup. The atheros drivers that come with OpenSuse 11 are an unfinished version that doesn’t work and conflicts with the working ones. To get this card working with OpenSuse 11 you have to compile an SVN snapshot of MadWifi.
If you want a module to be loaded on startup, go to yast->System->/etc editor. Check under Kernel, you will see a variable called MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT, add the module name, it should load the module at next boot.
Admittedly, the devs don’t make it easy, but you can remove knetworkmanager.desktop from /etc/xdg/autostart in order to prevent it from starting (though this will impact everyone’s profile, if you have multiple users). Easier than uninstalling.
It’s somewhat surprising that the kernel isn’t loading the module automatically upon detecting the interface, but you can try going into yast (without the module loaded), and creating a new interface that points to the module, for loading on boot. That should force the networking service to load the module at boot.