[gentoo-user] REQ: net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng default to +pcmcia

[gentoo-user] REQ: net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng default to +pcmcia

[Daevid Vincent]

I have been pulling my hair out for a while after updating my kernel, I
couldn't get my wlan0 wireless PCMCIA card to work again. I kept re-emerging
the "net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng" but was never getting the module. 

daevid ~ # emerge -av net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng
These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild  N    ] net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1_pre23  -build -pcmcia -usb
437 kB 
Total size of downloads: 437 kB

Then after staring at the ebuild line I realized much to my astonishment
that it is set to "-pcmcia". WTF?! This seems to me absurd. 90% of the
wireless cards out there are PCMCIA. So I had to edit my
/etc/portage/package.use file and add 'pcmcia' to it for this ebuild. I
guess I never noticed or even considered the possibility that it would
default to not building PCMCIA.

I would like to request that pcmcia be on by default for this ebuild.
This would also go for "net-wireless/hostap-driver".

"net-wireless/madwifi-driver" doesn't have this problem. It just works.

Is there some logic or reason behind them being defaulted to off for these
that I'm just not seeing?

I've added it as http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100835

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Re: [gentoo-user] REQ: net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng default to +pcmcia

[Stroller]

On Jul 30, 2005, at 9:34 pm, Daevid Vincent wrote:

> I have been pulling my hair out for a while after updating my kernel, I
> couldn't get my wlan0 wireless PCMCIA card to work again. I kept 
> re-emerging
> the "net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng" but was never getting the module.
> ...
>
> Then after staring at the ebuild line I realized much to my 
> astonishment
> that it is set to "-pcmcia". WTF?! This seems to me absurd. 90% of the
> wireless cards out there are PCMCIA.

As a "specialist purveyor of guaranteed Linux-compatible wireless 
cards" the figure of 90% seems to me slightly excessive. I sell two 
types of Belkin card, both using the Ralink chipset (`emerge rt25000`) 
and  both at the same price - over the past couple of months 40% of my 
orders have been for the PCMCIA (in fact Cardbus) model, 60% for the 
PCI model.

If I were to include sales of Prism54 cards (more expensive, but 
suitable for use in master mode for wireless accesspoints, basestations 
& routers) then the figures for PCI cards would be higher, but I feel 
the scarcity of these cards may be to blame for that figure, rather 
than the distribution of wireless laptops to wirelessly-networked 
desktop PCs.

Stroller.

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Re: [gentoo-user] REQ: net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng default to +pcmcia

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 13:34:31 -0700, Daevid Vincent wrote:

> [ebuild  N    ] net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1_pre23  -build -pcmcia
> -usb 437 kB 
> Total size of downloads: 437 kB
> 
> Then after staring at the ebuild line I realized much to my astonishment
> that it is set to "-pcmcia". WTF?! This seems to me absurd. 90% of the
> wireless cards out there are PCMCIA.

90% of the wireless cards out there don't need wlan-ng. For example, the
prism2 PCMCIA cards are supported in the kernel but the prism2 USB ones
are not.

I suppose the moral is, never trust the defaults, especially as they are
global, not per ebuild. If your computer has a PCMCIA slot, set the
pcmcia USE flag in make.conf.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

You couldn't get a job as a firing squad target.

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Re: [gentoo-user] REQ: net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng default to +pcmcia

[Richard Fish]

Daevid Vincent wrote:

>Then after staring at the ebuild line I realized much to my astonishment
>that it is set to "-pcmcia". WTF?! This seems to me absurd. 90% of the
>wireless cards out there are PCMCIA. So I had to edit my
>  
>

I think you have gotten 16-bit legacy PCMCIA and 32-bit Cardbus 
confused.  For laptop wireless cards, all of the cards sold today, and I 
would guess that 99% of all cards _in use_, are 32-bit cardbus, which do 
not require pcmcia-cs or the pcmcia tools.

-Richard

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RE: [gentoo-user] REQ: net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng default to +pcmcia

[Daevid Vincent]

All I know is that without the USE="pcmcia" the little card that I shove in
the side of my notebook didn't get a module installed... ;-) 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Fish [mailto:bigfish@asmallpond.org] 
> Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2005 4:24 AM
> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] REQ: net-wireless/linux-wlan-ng 
> default to +pcmcia
> 
> Daevid Vincent wrote:
> 
> >Then after staring at the ebuild line I realized much to my 
> astonishment
> >that it is set to "-pcmcia". WTF?! This seems to me absurd. 
> 90% of the
> >wireless cards out there are PCMCIA. So I had to edit my
> >  
> >
> 
> I think you have gotten 16-bit legacy PCMCIA and 32-bit Cardbus 
> confused.  For laptop wireless cards, all of the cards sold 
> today, and I 
> would guess that 99% of all cards _in use_, are 32-bit 
> cardbus, which do 
> not require pcmcia-cs or the pcmcia tools.
> 
> -Richard
> 
> -- 
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
> 
> 

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