!AutoUSBnet and NetTime_Kick

This nice tool that gets the IP address with DHCP has one small drawback if your computer has no hardware clock since NetTime module does not fetch the time as soon as a network link is there.

I did a quick test by adding this to RunImage:
DEF PROCTime
SYS “XOS_CLI”,“NetTime_Kick”
ENDPROC

And then in the DEF PROCwaiting_for_dhcp part as soon as the IP address has been allocated I call that one:

IF dhcp_state$ <> previous_dhcp_state$ THEN
status$ = FNmsg_trans(“ACQ”) + FNmsg_trans(dhcp_state$)
IF dhcp_state$ = “BOUND” THEN status$ += " (" + FNget_ip_address + “)”
PROCopen_window(statuswin%, status$)
PROCTime
ENDIF

With that small addition as soon as my computer got an IP address the time is set – real nice.

Perhaps a call to PROCTime should be added in other places too – I did not investigate the complete code since I assume that those in the know are on here anyhow and will hopefully consider this suggestion.

Note the XOS_CLI is to avoid error messages in case NetTime is not at hand… was just a quick fix for the current problem I had with the autodiscover interface setup and having no hardware clock in the computer at hand.

Cheers Herbert

Small addition: With WiFi it might happen, that the internet link is not fully up when AutoUSBnet gets the BOUND status.

It might thus be an idea to add some code that detects when the internet connection is up to run *NetTime_Kick at that moment
… and once the Internet link is there to store that information and assume the link to be stable … until for some reason the network link is gone.

Interesting … but where can !AutoUSBnet be found?

I think it’s part of the 4te/PiTools suite from RComp. I seem to have three different versions of the app doing roughly the same thing: ReDHCP, AutoDHCP, and AutoUSBNet. One of them (ReDHCP) comes with Direct, I think. Not sure on the differences between them, but Andrew Conroy’s name is in the Run file for ReDHCP.