Kool Aid Served Daily

So I'm creating ZFS filesystems left and right to hold my homedirs. I can remember to always do the correct path in /etc/passwd or I can teach autofs(4) to always put them in /home.

Assuming you have your ZFS homedirs in /etc/zfs:

# echo "*       localhost:/export/zfs/&" >> /etc/auto_home
# svcadm restart autofs
# cd /home/tdh
# df -h .
Filesystem             size   used  avail capacity  Mounted on
zoo/home/tdh            33G   3.4M    20G     1%    /export/zfs/tdh

I'd just installed Nevada build 55b on my laptop. I decided to try and bring up my wireless, which was ath0. I went into Start -> Administration -> Network and it told me that ath0 was not configured. So I configured it. Then it would not activate.

When playing with something, reboot. So I rebooted and the notebook got stuck after it brought up the onboard ethernet. I decided my change was the culprit.

I had to hard power the system (hold the power on button until the system shuts down). When I rebooted, I came up in single user mode. But that doesn't give you pretty graphics. So how to get to the tool?

I don't know. Instead I decided to remove the following files and reboot:

/etc/dhcp.ath0
/etc/hostname.ath0

Both were of size 0. The notebook did reboot.

But I still don't have wireless.

Okay, I brought up a Linksys WRT54GL without any keys and the notebook could connect. So it is something between the Belkin F5D7230-4 and perhaps the ath0 driver. Note that the same hardware works fine under WinXP.

I've tried this manually:

# wificonfig  history
essid           bssid             encryption    last seen
SimplyWestern   00:40:05:25:12:37 wep           Fri Jan 19 01:47:01 2007
loghyr1066      00:30:bd:90:c9:96 wep           Fri Jan 19 01:47:53 2007
Easton          00:0c:41:84:33:2a wep           Fri Jan 19 01:47:53 2007
NETGEAR         00:09:5b:71:17:28 wep           Fri Jan 19 01:47:53 2007
# wificonfig createprofile excfb essid=loghyr1066 encryption=wep wepkey1=123456789a
# wificonfig setprefer excfb 1
# wificonfig -i ath0 autoconf
wificonfig: autoconf: profile [excfb] is selected
wificonfig: connecting to profile 'excfb'
# ifconfig ath0 dhcp
^C
# wificonfig -i ath0 showstatus
        linkstatus: connected
        active profile: [excfb]
        essid: loghyr1066
        bssid: 00:30:bd:90:c9:96
        encryption: wep
        signal strength: strong(13)

We aren't able to get a response from the DHCP service on the Belkin. But if we look at its list of clients:

IP Address  	Host Name  	MAC Address
192.168.2.5	kanigix	        00:16:e6:8d:2a:34
192.168.2.2	mrx	        00:30:1b:3b:74:4f
192.168.2.4	(null)	        00:03:ba:a8:c2:61
192.168.2.6	mega-monkey	82:c0:5e:6c:d1:0e
192.168.2.7	(null)	        00:0b:5d:c3:97:78
192.168.2.8	kanigix	        00:09:5b:67:11:9d
192.168.2.9	sunny	        00:18:f8:6c:d1:04

I know 192.168.2.7 is the rtls0 interface on the laptop. If we boot the laptop up under WinXP, we can see the wireless grab 192.168.2.10.

192.168.2.7	kanigix	        00:0b:5d:c3:97:78
192.168.2.8	kanigix	        00:09:5b:67:11:9d
192.168.2.9	sunny	        00:18:f8:6c:d1:04
192.168.2.10	kanigix	        00:11:f5:86:22:c3

Looks like the laptop is also named kanigix - which can be evil. And it looks like Solaris is not passing a name back to the DHCP server.

One suspect might be shared_key mode versus open mode support from the router (see Helmets On!). Not sure, though, if that were the problem I shouldn't be seeing a good wificonfig connection. Aargh, too late at night. Time to check more on this tomorrow.