looked for, but did not find, "control knobs" for mesh

[quozl at laptop.org]

On Mon, Feb 02, 2009 at 02:09:31AM -0500, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
> To me, "two kids under a tree" is a very important scenario. 
> Although mesh fails on current Joyrides, I'm experimenting with 
> manual intervention (e.g., ifconfig) to get it going anyway.

Said manual intervention could be added as a button to Sugar, I guess.

> Aside from ifconfig up/down, what other "control knobs" exist for 
> starting/stopping radio communication using a 169.254.x.x address ?

None.  However, don't forget to investigate iwpriv and iwlist.

I've just done some of my early tests again on build 767 using three
XOs.  The minimum to get a manual mesh to establish is, on each XO:

0.  stop NetworkManager, disable it, and reboot,

	service NetworkManager stop
	chkconfig NetworkManager off
	reboot

1.  configure the radio (via the eth prefix),

	iwconfig eth0 mode ad-hoc essid quozl at laptop.org channel 6

2.  configure the network interface (via the msh prefix),

	ifconfig msh0 12.0.0.12

3.  emit packets,

	ping 12.0.0.11

The result is that the forwarding table will begin to contain MAC
addresses.  This is one way to test if the mesh is operational, before
moving units apart.

	iwpriv eth0 fwt_list

It isn't necessary to configure eth0 network interface with ifconfig if
you have no other need to do so.

-- 
James Cameron    mailto:quozl at us.netrek.org     http://quozl.netrek.org/