Re: Fedora & Ndiswrapper & Mimo Wireless

On Jul 27, 2005, at 5:53 PM, Jeff Vian wrote:

On Tue, 2005-07-26 at 22:13 -0400, Paul Hoy wrote:

Hi,


[Notes inline]




On Jul 26, 2005, at 9:36 PM, Jeff Vian wrote:

On Tue, 2005-07-26 at 17:30 -0400, Paul Hoy wrote:

On Jul 25, 2005, at 12:06 AM, Jonathan Berry wrote:

Hi Paul,
[notes inline]


On 7/24/05, Paul Hoy <paul.hoy@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Terry,


Thanks for your email. I should have provided more details in
my
original email. Being aware of the 4k of memory issue, I
recompiled
the kernel and also tried the Linuxant kernels.  I was able to
get
the lights going on the modem, but could never achieve a
connection
with the router.

So did you get farther with the 8k stacks versus 4k?  I would
think
that if you were having issues there that you would get nice
things
like kernel panics and lockups, not that it just wouldn't work.
But
my card works just fine (Broadcom chipset) with the 4k stacks,
so I
have not seen the symptoms of small stacks when larger ones are
needed.  But I have had other problems that resulted in kernel
panics
and hard locks.

One thing about recompiling the kernel, though. When I used
xconfig
to remove the 4k limit, it only gave me the option to disable
the
limit and indicated that FC4 would use a 8k limit. I though 16
k was
needed in some cases.

I think Linuxant, as mentioned before has 16k stack kernels.
I've
heard that the Linux kernel is going more toward 4k stacks
exclusively.

As you suggested, I also used the Network utility to try to
activate
the card. The lights came on (as I mentioned), but it could
not
connect. I tried several different settings.


I'm going to try it in SUSE, and see what happens, which is
too bad
because I really like FC4.

I don't think that SuSE will do any better than Fedora.
ndiswrapper
works just fine with Fedora.  So if you are having problems, it
is
with the configuration.  SuSE might be able to more easily
configure
things, but that would be the only possible difference I could
think
of (I'm not saying that it would be, just that would be a
possible
difference).

Thanks for your email.


Paul

If you could give us some specifics, such as wireless card(s)
(the
output of "lspci" for the card would be helpful), drivers, setup
(WEP,
etc, (no need to tell us keys, just whether you have it or
not)), what
you have tried, what hasn't worked, etc.  Without details, we
can only
help you so much.  With details, someone just might be able to
tell
you exactly what to do.


Jonathan


PS: Please do not put your reply above the email you are
replying to.
That is called top-posting and makes the conversation flow
harder to
follow when reading.  Please either put your reply below or
inline
(like this one) as that is the convention on this list.

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Hi,


Well, I've  begun to work with Fedora again to get  my Linksys
WPC54GX working. This time, I wanted to try the Linuxant
DriverLoader.


I downloaded and installed the Linuxant 2.6.12-1.388_FC4.stk16
kernel
to address the 4 k stack problem. Upon reboot, I encountered a
kernel
panic:


"Kernel panic - not syncing: net/sched ... generic.c:547:
spin_is_locked on uninitialized spinlock df4f3170. (Not tainted)"


Two questions: what may have caused this and which kernel version
do
I install? i586 or i686? How do I know which is the right one?


Finally, any hints about restoring the previous kernel would be
helpful.

1)
i586 is only needed for very old Pentium and maybe PII processors.
PIII
and up all use the I686 kernels.


Also, the kernel version you list "2.6.12-1.388_FC4.stk16" is not in
the
list of kernels I see on the linuxant site.  Which kernel did you
actually install?

The kernel I installed is:


2.6.12-1.1398_FC4


But the name of the downloaded file is called:


kernel-2.6.12-1.1398_FC4.stk16.i686.rpm.zip


The kernel is listed and can be downloaded from:


http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/wlan/full/downloads-fc4-kernel-
i686.php


And, before I get the kernel panic, the screen reads:


"Booting Fedora Core (2.6.12-1.1398_FC4.stk16)"

I noticed in my previous email that I wrote "2.6...388" .. should have

said "2.6...398".

Typos happen but I wanted to be sure what you meant.

Do you think that I used the incorrect kernel and that this caused the

kernel pacic. I have since tried another install, with the same
result.


By the way, I read somewhere that the mimo-based or pre-n cards might
not be supported by ndiswrapper. I wonder if this is the case with
Linuxant?

This is the latest FC4 kernel (for now at least) and AFAIK the only

differences with the kernel from Linuxant and the one from Fedora is the

size of the stack.  The kernel itself should not cause the panic, and
does not for me.

Is your system fully updated and consistent? You need to have the full

kernel and kernel-devel packages from Fedora installed for that kernel

level _before_ you install/boot the Linuxant kernel. That way when you compile the driver (ndiswrapper or driverloader) it gets properly linked

and can be used.

My procedure when I use ndiswrapper is to install/update the kernel
packages from Fedora, and compile ndiswrapper for that kernel.  Only
after ndiswrapper has been compiled and installed do I install the
kernel from Linuxant. With this sequence for me everything works.


To trouble shoot the kernel panic, do you still have the fedora kernel
installed?  If so  you should be able to select it from the menu and
boot from it.

Hi,

I installed the kernel three times and each time experienced a panic.

Thanks for your continuing assistance.

Paul

Thanks,
Paul

And, before the system hangs, the screen reads:


"Booting Fedora Core (2.6.12-1.1398_FC4.stk16)"
2)
restoring the previous kernel?
Did you do an install or an upgrade of the kernel?


Even the automatic tools like yum do an install of the kernel so you
have the old kernel available to use if the new one fails.  If you
do it
by hand you use "rpm -ivh kernel....rpm" and then the boot menu
allows
you to select which kernel you use.


If you did an update and overwrote/deleted the old kernel it is now
time
for the rescue disk.

Thanks,
Paul Hoy

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