MA111 problem at boot on Fedora FC3

I am using Fedora Core 3 (kernel 2.6.11) with the wlan pre26 driver on an AMD 1200 MHz processor desktop PC, and have been having boot problems with the MA111 since the 2.6.9 kernel (and the pre 23 driver). I use WEP shared key security, and a static IP address. I leave the MA111 connected all the time. 

Previously I posted a method which entailed a loop in rc.local, removing module prism2_usb and restarting wlan repeatedly until a connection was achieved. This was slow and services which required access to LAN or internet could not connect during boot because the wlan0 interface was not yet available.

I have found a better way, which is to patch the script /etc/wlan/shared by adding one line as follows:

In /etc/wlan/shared 
        wlan_enable()
        .......
        nsdname=`wlan_nsdname $1`
        if ! ${nsdname}_fwload $1 ; then
                ${ECHO} "Firmware failed to load for device $1"
                return 1
        fi
        # Enable the interface
        # ADD THE FOLLOWING LINE
        $WLANCTL $1 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=disable
        result=`$WLANCTL $1 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=enable`

The patched file /etc/wlan/shared is called by /etc/hotplug/wlan.agent and also by /etc/init.d/wlan.

I am not sure why this works, except that before the patch the result of the "wlanctl-ng  wlan0 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=enable" in the above script was "implementation failure" as shown below:
Jun  6 21:04:09 myntech kernel: hfa384x_docmd: ctlx failure=REQ_FAILED
Jun  6 21:04:09 myntech wlan.agent[19532]: Failed to enable the device, resultcode= implementation_failure .
Jun  6 21:04:09 myntech wlan.agent[19532]: WLAN Could not bring up wlan0
Jun  6 21:04:09 myntech kernel: hfa384x_drvr_start: cmd_initialize() failed, result=-5
Jun  6 21:04:09 myntech kernel: prism2sta_ifstate: hfa384x_drvr_start() failed,result=-5


After the patch the wlan0 interface is now stable, and trouble-free.

I notice that after un-plugging and re-plugging, sometimes the network routing table entries get lost. To get going again I must do the following:

service wlan restart
service network restart

and the link and network are restored.

Peter Ison

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