To change the bridge interface in VMware, the vmware-config.pl script can be used, or eth0 can be manually replaced with eth1 in the /etc/vmware/location file.

Our udev scripts were quite buggy in Mandriva 2006 regarding vmnet interfaces, they were automatically set up to use DHCP, which is wrong. An updated package in Mandriva 2006.0 community fixes this issue, but the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-vmnet* files have to be manually removed.

Vanilla vmnet module from VMware workstation oops when using bridge over wireless. It seems to be fixed in VMware-any-to-any-update patches.

It seems to be working on Suse 10.1 with VMware server, according to a Wireless and bridging topic on VMware forums.

Though, I was only able to connect with the host system, and not to other hosts on the local network. I've tried various ipw2200 and kernel releases, so the problem would be more likely to be on VMware's side.

• VMware and Wireless Networks
• Bridge with wireless

wpa_supplicant looks broken with ipw in Mandriva 2006.0 (see #18195). We can't backport wpa_supplicant directly, we need to select the right patches.

• http://hostap.epitest.fi/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/hostap/wpa_supplicant/?sortby=date&only_with_tag=hostap_0_4_branch
• http://hostap.epitest.fi/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/hostap/wpa_supplicant/ChangeLog?rev=1.230.2.12&sortby=date&only_with_tag=hostap_0_4_branch&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup
• http://bughost.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=467

I've fixed some issues in the network::thirdparty module that takes care of installing the required packages for a device. It includes the firmware and a daemon for ipw3945.

I had to a fix a bug about firmwares in network::thirdparty, it checks that the firmware files are installed by testing if a filename or file pattern matches. It used the glob_() function, from MDK::Common, but this won't work when a raw filename is passed (i.e. no wildcard). The standard glob() function (from Perl) won't work either, since it returns the expression even if the file doesn't exist. I had to bsd_glob() from File::Glob, forcing it to use no flags.

Another issue was some timing problem with the ipw3945 daemon, the network interface isn't immediately created once the daemon is started. So, a wonderful sleep 2 after daemon start copes with that...

I've fixed a lame bug that prevented the wireless link quality to be detected properly in net_applet and drakroam. It occured only when iwlist was used, it should be ok when wpa_supplicant and network roaming are enabled.

I guess it's bug #19379. Yes, I sux.

In Mandriva's wpa_supplicant package, we provide a wpa_supplicant service to start wpa_supplicant on boot. This service detects which driver should be used using modprobe.conf and starts wpa_supplicant as a daemon.

However, this is not reliable enough, since the wpa_supplicant daemon is killed when the device is brought down.

An alternative is to use wpa_supplicant support in the initscripts. This needs the WIRELESS_WPA_DRIVER variable to be set in ifcfg configuration files, which could be done by drakconnect.

The advantages would be :

• wpa_supplicant not killed by ifdown
• simplify the wpa_supplicant driver detection (no complicated awk anymore, but perl in drakconnect modules)
• easy support of new wpa_supplicant drivers (no need to modify the wpa_supplicant service, only to edit WIRELESS_WPA_DRIVER in ifcfg)
• allows multiple wpa_supplicant instances if many wireless devices are available
• the merge of the driver detection code in drakconnect would allow it to know if the configured card supports WPA
• easier to know if WPA is enabled for a wireless interface

The WIRELESS_WPA_DRIVER should be preferred WPA configuration method after 2005 LE is released, the wpa_supplicant service has to be dropped.

I've submitted again a patch to fix compilation of WPA as a module when the kernel build system is used.

It seems this patch has been merged in ipw2200, but it still needs to be merged in ipw2100 and netdev.

Here's the thread on ipw2100 mailing-list : http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.drivers.ipw2100.devel/4968