Odd ral(4) problem on NetBSD 4.0

[Stephen Borrill]

I've been installing our stripped down NetBSD 4.0 based software on 15
identical Dell Latitude 100L laptops with cardbus ral(4) cards. The
customer is using 64-bit WEP. We are using the very latest netbsd-4
sources. On 13 of the 15, everything works fine; ral0 associates in about
5 seconds and dhclient runs fine. On the other 2, the network status
eventually shows as active (after say 20 seconds), but dhclient doesn't
get an address (and a manually configured address doesn't work). The BSSID
and channel are found and correct. It's not a network card issue, I've
tried swapping.

Any clues how to proceed?

[David Brownlee]

Post by Stephen Borrill
I've been installing our stripped down NetBSD 4.0 based software on 15
identical Dell Latitude 100L laptops with cardbus ral(4) cards. The customer
is using 64-bit WEP. We are using the very latest netbsd-4 sources. On 13 of
the 15, everything works fine; ral0 associates in about 5 seconds and
dhclient runs fine. On the other 2, the network status eventually shows as
active (after say 20 seconds), but dhclient doesn't get an address (and a
manually configured address doesn't work). The BSSID and channel are found
and correct. It's not a network card issue, I've tried swapping.
Any clues how to proceed?

Probably irrelevant, but have you checked BIOS versions and
settings, and installed memory?

[Stephen Borrill]

Post by David Brownlee

Post by Stephen Borrill
I've been installing our stripped down NetBSD 4.0 based software on 15
identical Dell Latitude 100L laptops with cardbus ral(4) cards. The
customer is using 64-bit WEP. We are using the very latest netbsd-4
sources. On 13 of the 15, everything works fine; ral0 associates in about 5
seconds and dhclient runs fine. On the other 2, the network status
eventually shows as active (after say 20 seconds), but dhclient doesn't get
an address (and a manually configured address doesn't work). The BSSID and
channel are found and correct. It's not a network card issue, I've tried
swapping.
Any clues how to proceed?

Probably irrelevant, but have you checked BIOS versions and
settings, and installed memory?

Yes, yes and yes! All same BIOS version and RAM. No relevant BIOS settings
(it has onboard unsupported Broadcom wifi in MiniPCIe).

[David Brownlee]

Post by Stephen Borrill

Post by David Brownlee

Post by Stephen Borrill
I've been installing our stripped down NetBSD 4.0 based software on 15
identical Dell Latitude 100L laptops with cardbus ral(4) cards. The
customer is using 64-bit WEP. We are using the very latest netbsd-4
sources. On 13 of the 15, everything works fine; ral0 associates in about
5 seconds and dhclient runs fine. On the other 2, the network status
eventually shows as active (after say 20 seconds), but dhclient doesn't
get an address (and a manually configured address doesn't work). The BSSID
and channel are found and correct. It's not a network card issue, I've
tried swapping.
Any clues how to proceed?

Probably irrelevant, but have you checked BIOS versions and
settings, and installed memory?

Yes, yes and yes! All same BIOS version and RAM. No relevant BIOS settings
(it has onboard unsupported Broadcom wifi in MiniPCIe).

dmesg identical I assume? No difference in allocated IRQs?

[Stephen Borrill]

Post by David Brownlee

Post by Stephen Borrill
Yes, yes and yes! All same BIOS version and RAM. No relevant BIOS settings
(it has onboard unsupported Broadcom wifi in MiniPCIe).

dmesg identical I assume? No difference in allocated IRQs?

IRQ11 allocated to ral, cbb and uhci. dmesg appeared identical.

[David Young]

Post by Stephen Borrill
I've been installing our stripped down NetBSD 4.0 based software on 15
identical Dell Latitude 100L laptops with cardbus ral(4) cards. The
customer is using 64-bit WEP. We are using the very latest netbsd-4
sources. On 13 of the 15, everything works fine; ral0 associates in about
5 seconds and dhclient runs fine. On the other 2, the network status
eventually shows as active (after say 20 seconds), but dhclient doesn't
get an address (and a manually configured address doesn't work). The BSSID
and channel are found and correct. It's not a network card issue, I've
tried swapping.

Perhaps your ral cards draw a lot of power, and there are marginal
supplies on the CardBus slots of the odd 2 laptops.

Please send a dmesg.

Does it make any difference if you turn off WEP?

Dave

[Stephen Borrill]

Post by David Young

Post by Stephen Borrill
I've been installing our stripped down NetBSD 4.0 based software on 15
identical Dell Latitude 100L laptops with cardbus ral(4) cards. The
customer is using 64-bit WEP. We are using the very latest netbsd-4
sources. On 13 of the 15, everything works fine; ral0 associates in about
5 seconds and dhclient runs fine. On the other 2, the network status
eventually shows as active (after say 20 seconds), but dhclient doesn't
get an address (and a manually configured address doesn't work). The BSSID
and channel are found and correct. It's not a network card issue, I've
tried swapping.

Perhaps your ral cards draw a lot of power, and there are marginal
supplies on the CardBus slots of the odd 2 laptops.

An intriguing idea! That would fit the symptoms very well. Might this be
mitigated by ifconfig ral0 powersave or such like?

Post by David Young
Please send a dmesg.
Does it make any difference if you turn off WEP?

I'll swing by the customers and test tomorrow.

Thanks.

[Stephen Borrill]

Post by David Young

Post by Stephen Borrill
I've been installing our stripped down NetBSD 4.0 based software on 15
identical Dell Latitude 100L laptops with cardbus ral(4) cards. The
customer is using 64-bit WEP. We are using the very latest netbsd-4
sources. On 13 of the 15, everything works fine; ral0 associates in about
5 seconds and dhclient runs fine. On the other 2, the network status
eventually shows as active (after say 20 seconds), but dhclient doesn't
get an address (and a manually configured address doesn't work). The BSSID
and channel are found and correct. It's not a network card issue, I've
tried swapping.

Perhaps your ral cards draw a lot of power, and there are marginal
supplies on the CardBus slots of the odd 2 laptops.

Just to get closure on this...

We found that using a card with a 30% lower power consumption reliably
worked and also that switching from a 3Com access point to Linksys got the
ral(4) cards working almost perfectly (a few small drop outs). So I think
it was an interaction of low sensitivity access points and cards
struggling to get enough power.

So not a NetBSD problem at all.