PCMCIA and PPP started too late

[Edd Dumbill]

My net connection is via a PCMCIA card. Preferably, ntpdate should run after
this interface has been brought up, not before.

[Chris Scheib (schweeb)]

I have this problem as well. ntpdate is run in /etc/rcS, which is before pcmcia
has been initialized. I also use laptop-net to configure my wired interface,
which is started after ntpdate. Therefore my time is never synced on boot.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Hmm. Either pcmcia should be started in runlevel S, or ntpdate should not be.
I'm leaning toward the former, because it is expected that networking is
available in runlevel S, but I'm concerned because sometimes pcmcia can cause
the system to hang, and this would make it impossible to boot in single-user mode

[Lukas Kolbe (lucky)]

Same goes for pppoe and all other possible core-networking-devices.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

*** Bug 9267 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

It was also pointed out by Dave that ntpdate runs before bind starts, while DNS
services could be necessary for it to work

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

*** Bug 10575 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Matthew Parslow (bob)]

Created an attachment (id=1105)
Patch to move pcmcia to runlevel S

This small patch makes pcmcia the same priority as hotplug - given that it's of
roughly equivalent function, I thought this appropriate

[Norbert Kiesel (nk-iname)]

(In reply to comment #7)

> This small patch makes pcmcia the same priority as hotplug - given that it's of
> roughly equivalent function, I thought this appropriate

I think this is still not good enough: pcmcia has to run _before_ networking, so
S35 or so instead of S40

[Pascal Vincent (pvincent00)]

Associate pcmcia-cs with this bug.
See on http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=pcmcia-cs that this bug
(#278850, #248376, #253060) is fixed in experimental for debian.
Maybe it can be fixed for final hoary with this informations ?

[Pascal Vincent (pvincent00)]

Took a minute to look at debian's fix :

pcmcia-cs (3.2.8-2) experimental; urgency=low
 .
   * Start pcmcia in the S runlevel. Closes: #248376.

Can it be applied to ubuntu hoary ?

[Pascal Vincent (pvincent00)]

Took another minute to look at debian's fix :
it seems that in
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/pcmcia-cs/pcmcia-cs_3.2.8-2.diff.gz,
Debian uses S40 runlevel, like proposed by Matthew Parslow :
update-rc.d pcmcia start 40 S . stop 88 0 6 . >/dev/null

Sorry for multiple comments. Hope this help.
And sorry if i'm wrong, i'm still a newbie.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

(In reply to comment #10)
> Took a minute to look at debian's fix :
>
> pcmcia-cs (3.2.8-2) experimental; urgency=low
> .
> * Start pcmcia in the S runlevel. Closes: #248376.
>
> Can it be applied to ubuntu hoary ?

No, we are too close to release to make an intrusive change like this. We'll
address this issue in the next release cycle.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

*** Bug 14875 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Brice (bricem13)]

Hi

I had the same problem!

I tried to put pcmcia in S with the order 40, that didn't solve the problem!
Same with the order 35!!!

Then I realized that my pcmcia wifi card requires the loading of a firmware by
hotplug (atmel chip), thus pcmcia has to be started after hotplug otherwise it
takes some time to load the firmware and result in the non-sync of the clock as
the boot process continues. Moreover networking is started in the runlevel 40
the same as pcmcia, that means if I put pcmcia in S with the order 40 that won't
work because networking will be started before pcmcia!
Then I got it working by putting pcmcia in S with the order 40 (update-rc pcmcia
start 40 S . stop 88 0 6 . ) and I modified the order of networking: 41 instead
of 40 (update-rc.d networking start 41 S . start 35 0 6 . ).

I think you have to take into account the fact that some pcmcia cards require
the intervention of hotplug to work.

Best regards, Brice

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

*** Bug 17057 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

*** Bug 18540 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Jeroen (jeroenubuntu)]

I think ntpdate should not be called on boot. This solves this problem, *and*
speeds up the Ubuntu boot process.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

*** Bug 20189 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

I agree that pcmcia should theoretically be started in the rcS.d, we can get
that functionality by doing a merge against Debian; but I'm slightly concerned
that we're a bit late in the release process for that.

It doesn't actually matter whether it appears before or after S40networking;
pcmcia network cards should be marked "hotplug" rather than "auto" -- they'll
then come up through udev.

Also ntpdate should really be run in /etc/network/if-up.d, rather than part of
the boot process.

[Hidde Brugmans (hcbrugmans-deactivatedaccount)]

This still also goes for any pppoe connection, since these are run even later
than pmcia.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Review for dapper.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

adjust milestone.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

*** Bug 22332 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

*** Bug 22685 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Keep this one open

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

My general feel for what to do here is start pcmcia and ppp along with (or as a
result of) hardware detection.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

pcmcia has been moved into udev itself, remaining is to remove pcmcia-cs and
move the pcmciautils init script up to S13 in line with streamlined-boot

[Pascal Vincent (pvincent00)]

I have upgrade my compaq armada e500 from breezy to dapper today.
I have also suppressed pcmcia-cs package (pcmciautils package is installed) and
modified my /etc/network/interfaces as follow:

# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
#mapping hotplug
# script grep
# map eth1

# Ethernet
#auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

# wifi
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
        # wireless-* options are implemented by the wireless-tools package
        wireless-mode managed
        wireless-essid any
        wireless-key1 XXXXXXXXXXXXX

And now, it works perfectly ! My Wifi pcmcia card is active before network

My samba shares are automatically mount on boot. That wasn't working on breezy.
The only strange behavior is that i can't see ntpdate in my boot logs anymore.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

This has long-since been fixed in dapper, the bug was just buried.

pcmcia is loaded by S20 now, well before anything filesystem related is tried.

ppp can be loaded for networking by creation of a ppp0 in /etc/network/interfaces, which will bring it up before smb mounts, etc. are loaded

you won't see ntpdate in your boot logs because it's not run in the boot sequence, but as a result of interfaces coming up