Wireless card dies during 'emerge sync'

[phidias]

This is my first time with Gentoo, though I've used other flavors of Linux (and a couple BSDs) for a few years. I'm trying to do an install of 1.4rc1 from stage 1. My machine has two NICs: a 3com 10/100 ethernet nic which isn't currently in use, and a linksys wireless PCI card (I don't remember the model number offhand; I doubt that it's very important?). The linksys card is only a couple months old, and has worked flawlessly for me in winXP.

When I boot off the cd ifconfig only lists eth0, my 3com card, and lo. I do 'modprobe orinoco_pci', and then 'pci-setup', and eth1 shows up in ifconfig. I then run 'iwconfig eth1 essid "mynetworkname"'. Running 'iwconfig' at this point reports a working connection to the wireless network.

I then run net-setup and configure appropriately. After this I have a fully functional net connection. Everything in the install works great up until 'emerge sync'. This hangs as a different point in the sync each time I try it, and when I investigate I discover that I've lost all networking. At this point if I try to re-set my essid or the like with iwconfig it reports that "device or resource is busy". It also no longer lists a channel or essid when I type 'iwconfig eth1'. 'ifconfig eth1' lists several hundred thousand TX errors. If I type 'ifconfig eth1 down' it takes the interface down without complaining, but then typing 'ifconfig eth1 up' returns "SIOCSIFFLAGS: Device or resource busy".

Nothing I've found brings the interface back to working status save for rebooting and starting all over. I've done this whole process three times and each time have had the same result. Twice I lost my network on the emerge sync line "receiving file list ...", and once it started listing files for about 2 seconds before the network died.

I have no idea how to fix this problem at this point, and am rather frustrated. I'd really appreciate any advice. Thanks for your time.
_________________
-Rick Ballard
rick@sb.org

[raziel]

Might I ask what model Linksys adapter you're using specifically? Some of the Linksys chipsets can be detected with the orinoco module, but they won't work properly.

[phidias]

It's a Linksys WMP11.
_________________
-Rick Ballard
rick@sb.org

[raziel]

You'll probably have more success if you can use the modules from the linux-wlan project. They're made specifically for the prism2 chipset, which is what the Linksys cards use.

http://www.linux-wlan.com

[phidias]

Hmm. At this point it'll probably be less painful to do the install from a wired connection. Once I get the system up, I'll try those modules. Thanks for the advice.
_________________
-Rick Ballard
rick@sb.org