Greetings;
I did the kde-base updates tonight, assuming that would fix my missing
kde menu's. It did not, kde, see bug 197778, is still crippled... I'd
been running kernel 2133 because that was the last one that had support
for both ntfs and ndiswrapper. And I hadn't tried any of the newer
ones because livna is out of synch, the kmod-ntfs and kmod-ndiswrappers
stuff reporting dependencies on an older version of ndiswrappers than
what I had installed. 2133 was the last kernel where all this matched up.
Thinking maybe it took a reboot to fix the missing kde menu's, I did,
back to 2133. Imagine my surprise when the on-screen boot trace
reported ntfs AND wlan0 both on the injured and disabled list. It
appears that somewhere along the line, both kmod-ntfs and ndiswrappers
was removed. Thats a bit like waking up and finding I'm in solitary
confinement...
So I piddle with /etc/modprobe.conf to see if I can make the bcm43xx
driver load and run, I mean that was the general idea of all these
changes wasn't it?
It now looks like this:
#options ndiswrapper if_name=wlan0
alias wlan0 bcm43xx
Anything missing there?
But when I reboot to 2139 where ntfs still works, this comes out of the
network startup. From dmesg:
bcm43xx: Chip ID 0x4318, rev 0x2
bcm43xx: Number of cores: 4
bcm43xx: Core 0: ID 0x800, rev 0xd, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 1: ID 0x812, rev 0x9, vendor 0x4243, disabled
bcm43xx: Core 2: ID 0x804, rev 0xc, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 3: ID 0x80d, rev 0x7, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Detected PHY: Version: 3, Type 2, Revision 7
bcm43xx: Detected Radio: ID: 8205017f (Manuf: 17f Ver: 2050 Rev: 8)
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
and later when the interface is brought up:
bcm43xx: set security called
bcm43xx: .level = 0
bcm43xx: .enabled = 0
bcm43xx: .encrypt = 0
SoftMAC: Associate: Scanning for networks first.
SoftMAC: Associate: failed to initiate scan. Is device up?
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load
failed.
Now, atm I am booted to kernel-2.6.17-1.2139_FC5 because apparently
thats the only one left with a working kmod-ntfs, and I've borrowed a
radio from the motel, and brought up the eth0 interface in order to get
on the net.
How is this "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" file to be obtained and installed?
And, equally important to me, when do we get a kmod-ntfs that stays in
synch with the current kernels? Out of 5 kernels I currently have in my
/boot partition, 2139 is the only one that will allow access to
/mnt/hda1, (an ntfs partition with XP I don't run on it) the probable
source of this missing firmware file. I've tried them all in the last
hour and was very disappointed that ntfs access that worked perfectly
when booted to 2133 or any earlier kernel a week ago suddenly didn't work.
Note also that this is NOT NM driven, but the usual "service network
restart", NM still being broken for the broadcom 43xx radios I assume.
--
Cheers, Gene
