Re: [gentoo-user] wlan0/ndiswrapper failing after gcc-4 upgrade (and dual Windows boot)

[Mark Knecht]

On 11/25/06, Sergio Polini <sp_rm_it@×××××.it> wrote:
> Mark Knecht:
> >    Unless I'm mistaken, that module is ndiswrapper which was
> > emerged again after the kernel was rebuilt.
>
> Was ndiswrapper emerged *and updated*?
> My card name is Broadcom BCM4310 UART, my gcc is 4.1.1, my udev is
> 087-r1. I have to use ndiswrapper 1.23 because more recent versions
> do not work.
> HTH
> Sergio
> --

Sergio,
   Hi and thanks very much for responding. My apologies in advance for
the length of this post. Lots of info.

   In my case ndiswrapper was not updated. Before the upgrade and
after I was using 1.2-r1. It worked yesterday but fails today. I am
currently on the offending machine but using a wired interface with
the cable stretched across the house so that I can give real results.

   Following along in the spirit of your response I don't even see
version 1.23 so I've tried installing  the newest masked version, even
though I expect this failed on your machine:

Sector9 ~ # eix -I ndiswrapper
* net-wireless/ndiswrapper
     Available versions:  1.2-r1 1.25 1.26 1.28 1.29
     Installed:           1.29
     Homepage:            http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
     Description:         Wrapper for using Windows drivers for some
wireless cards

Sector9 ~ #

>From dmesg you can see the effects of loading each driver, one at a
time - not both together. I'm just posting both below to show the
difference in dmesg:

ndiswrapper version 1.2 loaded (preempt=yes,smp=no)

or...

ndiswrapper version 1.29 loaded (preempt=yes,smp=no)
usbcore: registered new driver ndiswrapper

(the second message was because there is a new usb USE flag. I turned
that off and I then do not get the second message when loading, but
the driver still doesn't work for me yet.)

They load slightly differently. Maybe part of the problem is the
changes in udev and the removal of hotplug and coldplug? Could that be
involved? I am now using the newest udev. Maybe that's part of the
problem?

The newest 1.29 version of the driver shows this when I run
ndiswrapper from the command line to install the Windows driver:

Sector9 ~ # ndiswrapper -i 802.11g/NetA3AB.inf
installing neta3ab ...
forcing parameter MapRegisters from 256 to 64
forcing parameter MapRegisters from 256 to 64
forcing parameter MapRegisters from 256 to 64
forcing parameter MapRegisters from 256 to 64
forcing parameter MapRegisters from 256 to 64
Sector9 ~ #

I don't like those messages. They don't happen with the older version 1.2-r1.

After modprobing ndiswrapper dmesg says it's loaded as does lsmod.
There are no error messages. However when I try to start the interface
it fails:

Sector9 ~ # /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start
 * Starting wlan0
 *   Bringing up wlan0
 *     192.168.1.159/24
 *     network interface wlan0 does not exist
 *     Please verify hardware or kernel module (driver)                   [ !! ]
Sector9 ~ #

So it seems to be unhappy with the way the driver is working. That
said there is no difference in this output for 1.2-r1 and 1.29

>From the command line it appears that the newest version of
ndiswrapper is suggesting I can now use a Linux driver. I have no idea
how to actually do that though.

Sector9 ~ # ndiswrapper -l
installed drivers:
neta3ab         driver installed, hardware (168C:001A) present
(alternate driver: ath_pci)
Sector9 ~ #

I do have the ath_pci driver and I can modprobe it successfully:

Sector9 ~ # modprobe ath_pci
Sector9 ~ # lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
<SNIP>
ath_pci                72800  0
ath_rate_sample        10880  1 ath_pci
<SNIP>
ath_hal               189264  3 ath_pci,ath_rate_sample
<SNIP>Sector9 ~ #

I don't see any errors in dmesg, or even any messages.

Since I cannot get ndiswrapper working how would I go about getting
ath_pci to work?

Sorry this got so long.

Thanks again,
Mark
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