Where is wlan0, I've only got ethX

[Alexander Volovics]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 08:15:18PM -0600, Jay Strauss wrote:

> I just did a new install of breezy on a Thinkpad A30.  It has a wireless card 
> (prism 2.x).  But when I do ifconfig -a  all I have are 'eth' entries.  Same 
> goes when I do iwconfig
 
> Furthermore I only have 2 NICs in this machine, a 10/100 wired and a wireless 
> where is "eth2" coming from?
 
> Why don't I have a wlan0 entry?

Did you configure wireless as your primary network connection during
the install?
(I ask this because I see from the output you included that you have
the hostap driver configured instead of the orinoco driver (the message
about not all of the functions of the card being available))

Are the hostap-utils also installed? (dpkg -l hostap-utils)

You don't have to worry about missing a 'wlan0' entry.
The docs about prism2.x and hostap mention wlan0 but for some
reason the network config in breezy creates a 'ethx' entry and this
works just as well.

Furthermore you don't have to worry about seeing 3 eth entries.
This is a peculiarity of the 'hostap' driver. For some reason it
needs 2 entries (read the hostap docs).
I also have a prism2.5 card and I also have 3 'eth' entries so
that it looks as if I have 3 nics. But 2 are created for the
hostap driver. In my case the wired nic is my primary interface
so I have:

wired:        eth0
wireless:     eth1 AND wifi0
              (you only have to configure and work with eth1)

My only problem with your setup is why the second (dummy) entry
for the hostap driver is also called 'eth' instead of 'wifi'.
That's why I asked if you had configured wireless as your
primary network connection (and if hostap-utils was installed).
Maybe in that case something is done differently.

I configured wired as primary and then installed hostap-utils to
be able to use the hostap instead of the orinoco driver installed
by default in my case. I would have expected in your case:

wireless:     eth0 AND wifi0
wired:        eth1

Alexander