iwconfig mode ad-hoc doesn't work?

[Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos]

Hi Bill,

Bill Mccormick wrote:
> Hi,  this is really for Javier,
>  
> I'm setting up a mesh portal config & I noticed that the iwconfig 
> command to set the mode to ad-hoc fails.   Is this expected?
>  
> On the XO:
> <snip>
> -bash-3.2# iwconfig msh0 mode ad-hoc
> Error for wireless request "Set Mode" 8B06
> SET failed on device msh0 ; Invalid argument
> </snip>
>  
> On my Fedora 8 portal:
> <snip>
> [root at pcary358 ~]#iwconfig msh0 mode ad-hoc
> Error for wireless request "Set Mode" 8B06
> SET failed on device msh0 ; Operation not supported.
> </snip>
>  
> the mesh network seems to be working ok so far, so I'm not sure if 
> this is a problem or not.   msh0 seems to be stuck in "Repeater" mode 
> in both cases.
>

msh0 is an interface where "mode" really is pointless (which may sound 
confusing, but makes sense if you think about it) because it has a mode 
of its own, namely "mesh mode" ;-) . If you want to use the wireless 
interface in ad-hoc mode, you probably want to use eth0 instead and set 
that to ad-hoc.

For the history, the value of the msh0 mode field used to be "ad-hoc", 
then changed to "repeater" and is non-settable.

Pol


-- 
Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos
Graduate student
Viral Communications
MIT Media Lab
Tel: +1 (617) 459-6058
http://www.mit.edu/~ypod/