On ndiswrapper

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2011-05-24 at 12:55 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
> 
> >> I have been trying to get an ancient Orinoco Silver PCMCIA card
> >> working under ndiswrapper, but I discovered after some "research"
> >> that ndiswrapper did not create *.conf files
> >> matching the ID 0342:0006 of my card (as listed by lshal).
> ...
> >> If anyone has a suggestion how to get this card working under Fedora-14
> >> I should be most grateful.
> > ----
> > I don't have a suggestion except that I used to have a laptop and a
> > silver Orinoco card and it was supported out of the box - way back...
> > perhaps Fedora Core 2. It was one of the very few wireless cards that
> > was supported by Linux back then.
> 
> Yes, IIRC orinoco_cs worked until Fedora-12.
> I don't think it worked in Fedora-13.
> 
> > Now it's entirely possible that support for the hardware has been
> > removed from the kernel (I'm too lazy to check now) but it strikes me
> > that trying to futz with ndiswrapper to make it work is probably crazy.
> 
> Orinoco_cs is still in the kernel, and is the module found
> when the card is inserted.
> But this usually (85% of the time) causes a kerneloop.
> Surprisingly, it works 15% of the time.
> But re-booting 8 times is rather a nuisance.
> 
> Incidentally, the reason I'm using the card is that it is part
> of a PCI-to-PCMCIA combination in an ancient Asus K8V system
> (in my grand-daughter's bedroom). 
> It also has a rather good extension to a large antenna.
> I have to confess that this machine usually runs under Windows XP,
> which supports the Orinoco cards; 
> but I'd like to try it under Linux if that is possible.
> 
> > Just wondering... did you ever modprobe for the orinoco (IIRC, it was
> > called orinoco_cs but don't trust my memory). As I recall, the Orinoco
> > silver was only capable of 40 bit WEP which is about as useful as tits
> > on a nun. What about dmesg?  Did it give you anything meaningful?
> 
> I don't mind WEP.
> I used to be paranoid, but I've been cured by drinking Guinness...
> 
> 
> For those (not me) who understand such things, the backtrace reads:
> ---------------------------------------------
> [tim at helen kerneloops-1295409320-1410-1]$ cat backtrace 
> WARNING: at net/wireless/core.c:633 wdev_cleanup_work+0x41/0x97 [cfg80211]()
> Hardware name: 1871Y81
> Modules linked in: sit tunnel4 michael_mic orinoco_cs orinoco cfg80211 nfs 
> lockd fscache nfs_acl auth_rpcgss sunrpc cpufreq_ondemand acpi_cpufreq mperf 
> ip6t_REJECT nf_conntrack_ipv6 ip6table_filter ip6_tables ipv6 uinput 
> snd_intel8x0m snd_intel8x0 snd_ac97_codec ac97_bus ppdev parport_pc snd_seq 
> snd_seq_device snd_pcm thinkpad_acpi parport iTCO_wdt iTCO_vendor_support 
> tg3 nsc_ircc rfkill snd_timer joydev snd i2c_i801 soundcore snd_page_alloc 
> irda microcode crc_ccitt yenta_socket i915 drm_kms_helper drm i2c_algo_bit 
> i2c_core video output [last unloaded: scsi_wait_scan]
> Pid: 2973, comm: cfg80211 Not tainted 2.6.35.10-74.fc14.i686 #1
> Call Trace:
>  [<c0439435>] warn_slowpath_common+0x6a/0x7f
>  [<f825540a>] ? wdev_cleanup_work+0x41/0x97 [cfg80211]
>  [<c043945e>] warn_slowpath_null+0x14/0x18
>  [<f825540a>] wdev_cleanup_work+0x41/0x97 [cfg80211]
>  [<c044acba>] worker_thread+0x141/0x1b8
>  [<f82553c9>] ? wdev_cleanup_work+0x0/0x97 [cfg80211]
>  [<c044df72>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x34
>  [<c044ab79>] ? worker_thread+0x0/0x1b8
>  [<c044dc2d>] kthread+0x64/0x69
>  [<c044dbc9>] ? kthread+0x0/0x69
>  [<c04038fe>] kernel_thread_helper+0x6/0x10
> ---------------------------------------------
----
that would seem to be sufficient info for a bugzilla report to the
kernel and they could probably fix it. I doubt too many people are
trying to use such old hardware with current versions of Fedora given
the memory requirements and speed of the hardware.

Craig


-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.