Fedora 10 wireless timing out on bootup

[jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org (Jarod Wilson)]

On Monday 09 March 2009 05:55:50 Randy Cole wrote:
> Jarod Wilson wrote:
> > On Thursday 05 March 2009 14:41:30 Matthew Gillen wrote:
> >   
> >> Randy Cole wrote:
> >>     
> >>> Under Fedora 10, my wireless is identified as eth1.  On bootup, stalls 
> >>> for a full minute until something times out.
> >>>
> >>> How can I prevent Fedora from waiting?  This doesn't seem to be a 
> >>> problem in Ubuntu.
> >>>       
> >> Try running system-config-network, and check the box that says "Controlled by
> >> NetworkManager", and un-check the box that says "Activate when computer starts".
> >>
> >> The latter option is usually redundant with the former.
> >>     
> >
> > Just to explain a bit more what's going on here... Since the wireless device
> > is identified as eth1, rather than wlan0, NM probably thinks its a wired
> > connection, and thus tries to start it earlier. Is that an out-of-tree wireless
> > driver by chance?
> system-config-network did the trick. Notice that there is also a
> system-config-network-cmd for command-line use. Neither has a man page.
> I was curious which config file was ultimately changed - guess I'll have
> to look at the source :-) .

On Fedora, /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-<interface name>, typically.

> I am 60% sure that ubuntu 8.10 out of the box used wlan0. Ubuntu doesn't
> try to start wireless at boot.

Neither does Fedora, typically, if the interface isn't being renamed to
'ethX'. At least, it doesn't on any of my 3 laptops, but they all leave
the wireless interface as wlan0, iirc.

> Fedora & Ubuntu start the wired ethernet
> at boot, gets a no-link present after about a second or so. Network
> connections, generally, should not be on the critical path at boot time,

For desktops and laptops, generally no. If you've got a network-dependent
service running though...

> i.e. should start asynchronous. Wonder how Ubuntu and Fedora handle
> boot-time dependencies - I know there are some fast-boot project(s) out
> there.

Both use upstart now. Not sure how Ubuntu works out deps, but w/Fedora, the
ordering of service startups is still mostly handled manually (i.e., the
package maintainers set their services to start in a particular numerical
slot, where all its deps are already started...). There are some automatic
resorting tools out there, and lots of talk about doing more stuff to make
things more async, but still handle dependencies correctly... But most of
them fall down relatively quickly, so at least a number of distros continue
to mostly start stuff up serially according to service number ordering...
There's also been talk for ages now about udev-triggered service start-ups,
for things like bluetooth daemons -- only start them once a bluetooth device
is enabled/plugged in/whatever. These are mostly all related to every
distro's 'faster boot' plans and goals. For Fedora, see:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/20SecondStartup

> As for drivers, Ubuntu 8.10 non-free driver works with the broadcom
> BCM4312 wireless, I think it was out-of-the-box. Fedora 10 x64 didn't
> recognize the chip out of the box, but did about the end of January.

Because Fedora won't ship a non-free driver. Probably also has something
to do with the difference in behavior on boot between the two with that
chip. So now I think you might have already said, but are you running the
free driver or the broadcom driver? Either way, it seems udev might need
to be told to stop renaming that type of interface...

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org