Updating Slackware — 3
Resolving a problem is a challenge when something “just works” for a long time. Often users tend to forget how something is configured or designed. Time and energy are required to refresh memories. Such was the case when I cloned my laptop Slackware partition to test updating Slackware 14.2 to Current.
For some reason the cloned partition refused to enable wireless networking. I was uncertain but NetworkManager seemed to be randomizing the MAC address. For some time I groped for a reason.
The problem was PEBKAC — a related custom script that did not recognize the new hostname.
The script was looking for a known hostname. The way I originally designed the script made sense at the time because the home network is only a few computers.
Revising the script without a dependency on the hostname resolved the problem. A different approach was needed. Instead of using the hostname I used computer types as defined in dmidecode.c. The modified snippet in the revised script:
dmidecode -t Chassis | grep Type: | egrep ‘Portable|Laptop|Notebook|Hand Held|All In One|Sub Notebook|Tablet'
If the test failed then the system was not a wireless device and the script exited.
The journey continues.
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: Slackware
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