iLiad Networking problems/questions...

[grayfox]

Hi,
I have installed mrxvg (wallcraft), dillo, and pieces of
unbrickable.

I have a wireless profile with wpa as the default profile to use.
I start the wireless net with the start script from the dillo
package:

root@ereader:/media/cf/Programs/connection-scripts-1/0_lan_on# cat start.sh
export scriptdir=`/usr/bin/dirname $0`
cd $scriptdir
connectionMgr --background --stay-connected

This works and I can then start dillo and surf the web

Here is the output from ifconfig:

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:1270 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1270 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:41891 (40.9 KiB)  TX bytes:41891 (40.9 KiB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr <redacted>  
          inet addr:192.168.1.102  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2607 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1758 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 
          RX bytes:210546 (205.6 KiB)  TX bytes:389139 (380.0 KiB)
          Interrupt:68

I have copied dropbear and scp from unbrickable into /usr/bin.
I can start dropbear and netstat will show that it is running.
(I start from mrxvt).

A ugly problem is that it appears that the iLiad is not broadcasting
ARP info.

This means that none of the computers on my local net can "see"
the iLiad.

I have found that if I ping one of my local computers that I want
to run ssh from to connect to the iLiad that the arp table will
recognize the iLiads IP and then I can ssh to the iLiad.

I still get occasional freezes on my mac when ssh'ing to theiLiad.
Pinging the Mac from the iLiad seems to fix this problem for a while...

If I try and ifdown wlan0, ifdown reports that it is ignoring wlan0?

Trying to run scp from the iLiad gives a funky message

root@ereader:/media/cf/Programs/connection-scripts-1/0_lan_on# scp start.sh jerry@192.168.1.80:foo
/usr/bin/dbclient: No such file or directory
lost connection

Any I doing something wrong?

Jerry

[grayfox]

After some more experimention it appears that I must ping
a member of the local net before I can connect to the iLiad
from the local net....?

Seems like the (local) routing is some how not properly
being initialized on the iLiad.

Running the connection command

connectionMgr --background --stay-connected

in my previous post at the command line gives a bunch
of output that gives the appearance of trying to connect
to the iRex servers... (and ifconfig shows that the net
is up )

T'aint clear why pinging a local node clears the problem.

Jerry

[grayfox]

Well,

I decided to skip the connection manager and installed
Alanine's Nifty Wireless Tools which directly call the
wireless setup procedure.

I still have the same problem with having to ping
some local network computer before wireless communications
can take place between the iLiad and any other machine on
the local net.

I am using WPA, does anyone else have this problem?

Doh!

Jerry

[Adam B.]

I haven't been able to get around this problem either. I just use wired any time I need to connect to the iLiad from another machine.

[alanine]

I don't have this problem at all. After I start iliad's wireless network (using my script or a plain shell script that calls wireless.sh start), I can connect to it with no problem. My wireless router even assigned it a hostname called "ereader" automatically, so all I do is "ssh root@ereader".

Perhaps it's something with DHCP?

[grayfox]

Well this is just weird...

Yesterday wireless+ssh was a disaster. The connection would
lockup every thirty seconds or less

This morning it appears to be rock solid.

Go figure...

Jerry

[grayfox]

Ugh,

I spoke too soon.

I just rebooted and restarted wireless with dropbear.

I am lucky to get two or three commands before a lockup.

I have a "Ping" iLiad thingy that clears the stall, but who
wants to keep clicking the tablet every thirty seconds

[ebookie]

I'll tell you what this sounds like, it sounds like your Illiad and something else are sharing the same IP address. Basically if the arp table is getting screwed up by the other device (what ever it is).

So try this, note the IP address of your Illiad, turn it off, try to ping that IP address and see if you get a response.

I had a similar problem when I had aliased one of the network adapters on a development machine and didn't notice it because the 'main' IP address was clearly unique!

--Chuck

[HET2]

Originally Posted by grayfox

Ugh,

I spoke too soon.

I just rebooted and restarted wireless with dropbear.

I am lucky to get two or three commands before a lockup.

I have a "Ping" iLiad thingy that clears the stall, but who
wants to keep clicking the tablet every thirty seconds

I am having the very same problem although I don't know about fixing with pings. The symptoms are pretty similar:

I open a connection using either connectionMgr or wireless.sh (either directly or with alanine's scripts) with wpa encryption.

Then everything works well until I start doing something else on the GUI - like browse my books in the content lister. The more I browse, the more packages from my ping requests are dropped until at some point the connection is lost all toghether.

To me it seems like one of these 'issues with badly coded drivers which don't like having few cpu time' which Mathjes talked about a while ago.

But seriously, something is very wrong here and it is not the linux kernel. I had more stable lan connections on my 486dx2 with Windows 98. My iPAQ 3130 which doesn't have even half the computing power of an iLiad but had double the functionality (at least after I installed linux on it was also a lot more stable.

I will do some further investigation on the correlation between system load and connection loss.

Just on a side note, for some reason wired.sh fails to open a wired connection. It brings up the ethernet device alright but the ethernet LED's on the travel hub aren't flashing and I can't ping into or out of the iLiad. Am I forgetting something?

[alanine]

I'm starting to have similar issues with wireless network after I installed a new 4GB CF card. Previously I was always using the internal memory and never had an issue.

I did an experiment.

I set the news button to open the folder on internal memory, and put my network package there. Then I yanked out the CF card, and start my wireless network script to connect. After it's connected I then start a ping program from my computer to ping the ereader. At this point all seem to work until the moment I insert the CF card. Wireless network dies immediately.

The second experiment is to start the network while keep CF card always inserted. Note that I still start the network script via the news section stored on the internal memory. I was able to start wireless network many times, and it works. But as soon as I SSH into it and start to SCP files from a remote computer, the wireless network becomes rather problematic, and often dies after the SCP finishes.

The third experiement is to start the network script from a directory on CF card, it actually fails to start very often. I tried the ping-from-another-host method before I start the network, it works sometimes, but also fails some other time.

So definitely the wireless network has got some bug related to acessing external storage like a CF card, because every time I insert the CF card, the wireless network dies. Very reproducible, EVERYTIME. I wonder if it's my brand new Sandisk 4GB CF card that's causing the problem, or indeed an issue with iliad software (or hardware). Can somebody try it and confirm if you have the same problem?

[HET2]

Originally Posted by alanine

I'm starting to have similar issues with wireless network after I installed a new 4GB CF card. Previously I was always using the internal memory and never had an issue.

I did an experiment.

I set the news button to open the folder on internal memory, and put my network package there. Then I yanked out the CF card, and start my wireless network script to connect. After it's connected I then start a ping program from my computer to ping the ereader. At this point all seem to work until the moment I insert the CF card. Wireless network dies immediately.

The second experiment is to start the network while keep CF card always inserted. Note that I still start the network script via the news section stored on the internal memory. I was able to start wireless network many times, and it works. But as soon as I SSH into it and start to SCP files from a remote computer, the wireless network becomes rather problematic, and often dies after the SCP finishes.

The third experiement is to start the network script from a directory on CF card, it actually fails to start very often. I tried the ping-from-another-host method before I start the network, it works sometimes, but also fails some other time.

So definitely the wireless network has got some bug related to acessing external storage like a CF card, because every time I insert the CF card, the wireless network dies. Very reproducible, EVERYTIME. I wonder if it's my brand new Sandisk 4GB CF card that's causing the problem, or indeed an issue with iliad software (or hardware). Can somebody try it and confirm if you have the same problem?

Ah, that sheds some light onto the issue. I did some crude reproduction and further experiments along your trait. I too have a 4Gb CF card and the connection goes down only when I browse the card. My CF card is a Lexar, so I doubt it is the brand. I tried starting the wireless network with wpa encryption and mucking about on my 1Gb MMC card. This slowed down 2 ping request but there was no packet loss. I think this is definitely an candidate for a bug report. It would be interesting to have someone try it with a smaller CF card too. Irex do say somewhere in the docs that the wireless connection may fail if the power is low (paraphrasing here) so I am curious if this may be an issue with a power consumption peak but I am just guessing here.