Re: Wireless problem with a Conceptronic CH3WNAS, and more

[Frank Wille <frank%phoenix.owl.de@localhost>]

On Fri, 05 Apr 2013 20:39:06 +0200
Isaac de Wolff <idewolff%dds.nl@localhost> wrote:

> Using the dsmg600 instructions I installed NetBSD 6.0.1 on my box. Now 
> I have a few problems:
> 
> 1) The wireless connection dies after a few minutes. No errors in any 
> logfile or in dmesg, but there is just no traffic anymore. I have found 
> that the sequence
> 
> ifconfig ral0 list scan
> /etc/rc.d/wpa_supplicant restart
> /etc/rc.d/dhclient restart
> 
> brings back the network, for a few minutes. When I omit the ifconfig 
> line, the box also gets an ip address, but it takes far more time, and 
> then there is no traffic either.

Although I have a CH3WNAS and a DSM-G600 myself, I rarely used them
with WLAN. I remember that the implemented RALink RT2525 is nearly
unusable, because it only worked when being within 1 or 2 meters of
the base station.


> 2) When I shutdown or reboot the box from the commandline, it often 
> hangs after spawning
> 
> syncing disks... 14 3 done
> unmounting file systems... done
> 
> to the serial port. Surprisingly when I press the power button, it 
> shuts down, so the box is not just stalled. It seemed to help a bit to 
> set 'swapoff=NO' in /etc/default/rc.conf

Do you have tmpfs file systems? Maybe it has something to do with
PR41766?

But I remember that I have seen that too. In any case you will lose
a lot of time on shutdown or reboot with swapoff=YES, so I usually
turn it off, as long as I don't have a RAID system.


> 3) Directly after booting there is always a program makemandb running, 
> which takes lots (30MB?) memory, causing the box to swap heavily. 
> According to google is a sort of man page indexing service. Why does it 
> run on each boot? Am I clearing some cache or so.

It updates the index for the man pages in the database.

I guess when you don't have new man pages there is no need to run it,
and it is really bad for small systems, so I usually turn it off as
well.


I have cross-posted my reply to netbsd-users, because all above are
general NetBSD questions and have (hopefully ;) nothing to do with
the sandpoint port.

-- 
Frank Wille