Re: RE: Problems with usb adapter: 'NETDEV WATCHDOG: wlan0:

> 
> I've read the thread's of june. Quite awesome... 
> 
> 
> Well, I think I don't have hald running on the system ("ps -ef |grep hald"
> retrieves nothing).
> 

Hmm - unusual for a modern distro. Mind you, hald might
have been started, done its damage, and then for some
other unrelated reason it could have crashed - it
can happen!

> Instead, reading your previous mails of june, I've read something about
> dbus/hald:
> 
> 
> Do you know if with "dbus" happens the same?? 

No, it won't be dbus on its own since that is just
an inter-process communication system and doesn't
touch any of the hardware. You need not worry about
dbus itself.

However, some distros use dbus to start hald, so on the
hal question, see if you have a file like
/etc/dbus*/*/*hal which would be the hal starter file.
Other distros probably run it like any other 'service'.

> 
> 
> > 
> > This should not be necessary. It suggests the coldplug
> > mechanism is not working in your boot sequence.
> > 
> 
> Let's talk about hotplug... it was not activated on my system, so (just for
> try and see) I activated the hotplug service. Then I booted up the system
> and... surprise, a new annoying message in /var/log/messages appeared:
> 
> Dec 14 00:00:12 localhost kernel: p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt
> prior to association, frame dropped
> 

This message can be ignored. It just means network communication is trying to start before the card has
properly sorted itself out, and his harmless.

> What happens now??
> 
> More things I've seen... in /var/log/messages appears a suspicious message:
> 
> Dec 13 23:59:43 localhost udev: Inicia udev succeeded
> Dec 13 23:59:43 localhost service_harddrake[3212]: ### Program is starting 
> ###
> Dec 13 23:59:43 localhost service_harddrake[3212]: modified file 
> /etc/X11/XF86Config
> Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost harddrake:  succeeded
> Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost wlan: Starting WLAN Devices:
> Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost wlan: FATAL: Module p80211_prism2_usb not found.
> <== WHAT HAPPENS HERE?

Now this looks dodgy - but from your lsmod
output below the proper kernel modules of p80211 and
prism2_usb are loaded (hence your system does end up
working). I wonder if you have a bug
in modules.conf, modules.alias and such like.

> Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost wlan: ^[[65G[^[[1;32m
> Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost wlan:  D'ACORD
> Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost rc: S'està iniciant wlan:  succeeded
> Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost network: S'estan configurant els paràmetres de la
> xarxa:  succeeded
> Dec 13 23:59:50 localhost network: S'està iniciat la interfície loopback:
> succeeded
> Dec 13 23:59:50 localhost portmap: Inici de portmap succeeded
> 
> 
> I can't understand why appears this message. Anyway this doesn't affect to
> the connection. I've also observed that the wlan service appears as stopped
> in the list of available services... (the check mark for start the wlan at
> boot is activated!) (?)
> 

You really need to work out the exact startup sequence
and interaction between hotplug events, coldplug synthesis of hotplug events, and hard-start services (like your wlan service) for this distro.

It may be that these 3 aspects are competing and racing each other, which creates all kinds of confusion and makes it hard to debug.

Where to start: try disabling the wlan service, and blacklisting prism2_usb module in the hotplug system (there should be a file under /etc/hotplug to list blacklisted modules). That way the machine should boot without
bringing up the card.

Then manually load the prism2_usb module with modprobe and see if the card comes up and works okay.

Karl

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