Message-ID: <438F5232.6020704@clanganke.de>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4.5; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050726
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: <200511290312.jAT3Cpk7082466@taka.swcp.com>
In-Reply-To: <200511290312.jAT3Cpk7082466@taka.swcp.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Date:  Thu, 01 Dec 2005 20:42:42 +0100
Sender: os2-wireless_users-owner <os2-wireless_users-owner@2rosenthals.com>
Reply-To: os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com
From:  Christian Langanke <os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com>
To:  os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com
Subject: [OS2Wireless] XWLAN script for changing between wifi and wired LANs


Chris Clayton wrote:

>With genmac the nic is always attached so the is no reason not to
>restart peer after making the change over between wifi and wired.  The
>only hitch is a peer start or stop takes quite a bit of time, 10-30
>seconds, so it would be better to run the script detached.  Will this
>cause a problem with xwlan settings?
>  
>
To be sure it would just make sense to perform any peer related action 
on the end of the processing for each event, but that should be the 
case/no problem. Of course it would be required to either launch the 
script asynchronously (not wait for script end) or better start a peer 
comand within another session from the otherwise synchronous executed 
script. Letting XWLAN wait for 20 secs would hang PM...

>The way I would restart peer is via:  'login name /p:password [/L]'  
>This way one is logged in and ready to access shares.  The /L
>parameter
>is only needed when one is logging into a NetBIOS server network (eg, 
>WINS [ugh]), not usually a SOHO environment.
>  
>
Sure, Ithat was not the provlem, but XWLAN should only offer to stop or 
launch it if it is absolutely clear that (a) NetBIOS is bound to the 
WLAN nic and (b) the peer service (so to say IBMLAN.INI) is definitely 
using this protocol on the WLAN adapter. _This_ is the problem that 
cannot be solved bullet-proof. I very much hope that any protocol 
manager replacement that may come up in the future, can exactly be 
queried for all nic and protocol binding related issues.

>>OTOH I could well think of enhancing XWLAN with some of the things 
>>your script does, just like starting/stopping peer. The bad part on this 
>>is that there is no way to safely determine if a NetBIOS compatible 
>>protocol stack is bound to the Wifi nic. In any way I would appreciate 
>>if we can proceed on that further, please send pm if you are interested 
>>in that.
>>    
>>
>
>If peer isn't available, wouldn't a call to a peer function return an
>error that could be parsed?
>  
>
Yup. But IMHO the XWLAN GUI should only offer a repective GUI page if 
the above stated prerequisites are met.

>I agree, if I were to put this script into 'production' I would add a
>lot of feature like this to make it more user friendly.  In fact this
>is a very good reason to change it to a REXX script where one could
>setup a handy config program/file.
>  
>
That's what I meant. If you want to stick to Win* ini files, I can send 
you a procedure for reading keys out of it (oh - will have to dig my 
hardfile for this one).

>>>1)  When the radio is turned off the SSID does not appear to be passed
>>>to the script (I get a NULL string).  So I used the profile name as a
>>>test instead of the SSID as indicted in the sample script.
>>>      
>>>
>>Will check that. The SSID should be empty only when (dis)connectiing from/to a hotspot.
>>    
>>
>
>Thanks
>  
>
Fixed for the upcoming version.

>>>2) I had to disable the TCP/IP setup in the 'Home' profile and do the
>>>setup in the script because I got a popup error message about using
>>>duplicate fixed IP addresses for both lan0 and lan1.  The 'Travel' DHCP
>>>setup was ok, no configuration statements are needed in the script
>>>except for ensuring that the wired LAN is deleted.
>>>      
>>>
>>Just thought about to add a property to suppress this warning in favour either for the wireless or cabled interface. Think this should help you to make your script even shorter.
>>
>>    
>>
>As long as folks understand that only one LAN can be active at any
>given time when using the same IP address
>  
>
Yes, true. The default for this setting would still be "ask the user". 
And nobody can help for people not reading help pages - and even power 
user ask questions they could easily answer themselves.

>>>3) The wifi is sometimes stubborn about connecting to a profile, even
>>>if the AP is only a few feet away.  I'm not sure if this is a xwlan
>>>script problem or related to interference from local networks.  
>>>      
>>>
>>May also be a driver issue... I sometimes even get a "no driver available", while the hardware _is_ available and was working before, and that both from genprism and genmac drivers (and the mini pci card csnnot be removed, right ?)
>>    
>>
>
>That thought crossed my mind also.
>  
>
In gereral this is still true, although I must admit that I found a bug 
in 2.02 for the situation I told above. Within the standalone version, 
go to the script properties page and press the browse button. Then the 
widget will tell no card is available... Seems to be a problem with file 
handles - in the standalone version the driver handle is zero (for the 
first file opened this handle is valid in a PM process), and when the 
call to WtkDirDlg returns, on every following call to the driver this 
handle turns to be invalid - so the status "card not available". Even 
though WtkDirDlg is "my" code (me being the author of Workplace Shell 
Toolkit), I wasn't able to find out the problem source. I assume for any 
reason file handle zero is closed accidentally. As the Widget is running 
in the xCenter context, the driver handle is not zero, so the problem 
does not show up. I still wonder which part of xCenter is harmed then by 
WtkDirDlg ... so far no strange behaviour showed up.

>>I also found a bug that for "radio on" (or was it "radio off") no 
>>(dis)connect script event is generated. Will have to go after that...
>>    
>>
also fixed for the next version.

bye, Christian

-------------------------------------------------

Christian Langanke
COS2E & CWSE
Team OS/2 Ruhr e.V., Germany
cla@clanganke.de
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to
steward@2rosenthals.com with the command
"unsubscribe os2-wireless_users" in the body
(omit the quotes).

For help with other commands, send a message
to steward@2rosenthals.com with the command
"help" in the body (omit the quotes).

This list is hosted by Rosenthal & Rosenthal
P.O. Box 281, Deer Park, NY 11729-0281. Non-
electronic communications related to content
contained in these messages should be directed
to the above address. (CAN-SPAM Act of 2003)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=