solved: wpc11v4 AND pcmcia AND wep PROBLEMS

[mothraman]

I am trying to use a Linksys WPC11v4 PCMCIA wifi card with an IBM Thinkpad 1161-210 with a 6G HD, 160MB RAM, and a 500mhz intel celeron processor.

This worked on windows 98 forever up to last week when I trashed windows in my attempt to load a working linux.

With puppy 4, the card is not recognized. I have tried ndiswrapper to load the windows driver through the "connect" button. I get "invalid driver!" for the xp driver, then again when I tried the other driver in the winnt folder just for grins.

Following manual steps I found:
1. I navigated to the folder where the driver is (I downloaded it from Linkysys, unzipped it to a CD, then copied the cd to my hard drive)
2. entered ndiswrapper -i xxxxx.inf--response: already loaded
3. ndiswrapper -l: both drivers listed with "invalid driver!"

Next I tried to unload the drivers so I could try the manual steps again-- modprobe -r xxxxx "FATAL--not found"

Since then, I wiped my hd (for other reasons) and tried again. With the driver on the cd, I mounted the cd, navigated to the directory on the cd, then entered ndiswrapper -i xxxxx.inf result: invalid driver! I doubt that, since I've been using it under windows.

In most of the posts that I read here and elsewhere, people at least get their cards recognized. In my case, puppy is not recognizing the pcmcia at all (evidently--even os's that won't install cause the power light on the card to turn on--not puppy).

Any thoughts as to what I should try next?

[ieee488]

Try disabling QuickBoot in the BIOS.

[mothraman]

ieee488, what new result should I expect and why?

BTW, I think the problem is that puppy is not recognizing the pcmcia slot at all (the power light on the card does not come on), so this may be the problem, not the card--or at least I can't tell if puppy has a problem with the card until puppy recognizes the slot.

[Béèm]

It might indeed that the pcmcia slot isn't recognized.
- is it on in the bios?
- if you do a lsmod in rxvt, do you find some module with yenta in?

[mothraman]

Beem, I don't see anything about pcmcia in the bios settings. I doubt that's the problem, because other os's find the card. (windows does fine, xubuntu turns on the power on the card before it stops booting).

lsmod shows nothing with yenta in it.

Thanks.

[ieee488]

No, disable Quick Boot in BIOS. That is how I have my Thinkpad 600 set up. All I know is that I have read to do that for various distros of Linux.

[Béèm]

Also do a search via puppysearch (see my sig) and select yenta to search for.
There is a lot of reading material on WFi with pcmcia.
It looks like the basic pcmcia support isn't loaded.

UPDATE
Didn't think of it before.
My Thinkpad R40 has a pcmcia interface also.
I looked at the loaded modules and yenta_socket is loaded.
You said there is no yenta module loaded.
Can you post the output of pupscan interface information.

[Aitch]

try typing in a console

pcmcia-socket-startup

or

pccardctl eject
pccardctl insert

also, afterwards, try

lspcmcia

which should AFAIK list any pcmcia modules you have installed, though there have been some recent changes.....udev/hotplug, which I haven't managed to get an explanation of, yet

I think

dmesg

should work if lspcmcia doesn't

Aitch

[mothraman]

ieee488: I have no quickboot option. I do have fast boot, but disabling that only makes the boot slow by scanning through 160MB of RAM. No discernible effect on anything else.

aitch: all your suggested comands return: "command not found"

I ran dmesg. There is nothing about PCMCIA, but I did find 4 instances of the following:
PCI: setting IRQ 11 as level triggered
PCI: found IRQ 11 for device 0000:00:03.1
PCI: sharing IRQ 11 for de4vice 0000:00:00.1
PCI: sharing IRQ 11 for de4vice 0000:00:00.2
IRQ routing conflict

Between the 3rd and the 4th:
PCI: setting IRQ 10 as level triggered
PCI: found IRQ 10 for device 0000:00:07.2

I only mention this, because I found the following in the wiki:
"PCMCIA on Twinhead 233 MMX Slimnote EX
I had to add
pci=irqmask=0x8000
to the kernel boot parameters. Without this moving the mouse would hard hang my system. The kernel would assign the same IRQ to the PS/2 Touchpad and the PCMCIA Network Adaptor."

I tried adding that by editing the boot string in grub--no effect.

Does any of this help anyone find something else that might work?

[Béèm]

Can you post the output of pupscan interface information.

Reminder of some (5 hours ago)

[mothraman]

Not sure what you're looking for here. I attached the pupscan output I get from clicking on the "pci" button. (Actually, I was going to attach it, but I kept getting "extension nopt allowed" do I pasted it).
DESCRIPTION: Intel Corporation 82440MX Host Bridge
VENDOR: 8086 DEVICE: 7194 KERNEL MODULE: unknown


DESCRIPTION: Intel Corporation 82440MX AC'97 Audio Controller
VENDOR: 8086 DEVICE: 7195 KERNEL MODULE: snd-intel8x0


DESCRIPTION: Intel Corporation 82440MX AC'97 Modem Controller
VENDOR: 8086 DEVICE: 7196 KERNEL MODULE: slamr


DESCRIPTION: Silicon Motion, Inc. SM712 LynxEM+
VENDOR: 126f DEVICE: 0712 KERNEL MODULE: unknown
DESCRIPTION: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6812 CardBus Controller
VENDOR: 1217 DEVICE: 6872 KERNEL MODULE: unknown


DESCRIPTION: Intel Corporation 82440MX ISA Bridge
VENDOR: 8086 DEVICE: 7198 KERNEL MODULE: unknown


DESCRIPTION: Intel Corporation 82440MX EIDE Controller
VENDOR: 8086 DEVICE: 7199 KERNEL MODULE: unknown


DESCRIPTION: Intel Corporation 82440MX USB Universal Host Controller
VENDOR: 8086 DEVICE: 719a KERNEL MODULE: uhci-hcd


DESCRIPTION: Intel Corporation 82440MX Power Management Controller
VENDOR: 8086 DEVICE: 719b KERNEL MODULE: i2c-piix4

There's a pulldown for loaded modules. Nothing about pcmcia in there.

Also a button for usb. Didn't press it.

If this isn't what you wanted, let me know and I'll try to get it.

Also, I tried various acpi boot options (force, on, off). There is no effect. I get the same "no dmi year in bios, acpi=force required" message (in dmesg) even when I use acpi=force.

I tried booting with the card in and with the card out.

These are all suggestions I found in various posts.

[Aitch]

O2 Cardbus device .....is your pcmcia controller

see here, I believe Béèm has already suggested this yenta solution

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 38644ad702


see also tempestuous's comment here about restarting your card, which I suggested

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 5&start=15


perhaps you will need to post your bootsysinit.log

Aitch

[Béèm]

Type in the rxvt terminal

Code: Select all

modprobe yenta_socket

and tell us what the outcome is.

[mothraman]

Thanks guys.

I tried this earlier but had to go out before I could post the results.

modprobe yenta_socket

power light comes on!

Connect (lower left of screen): clicked wlan0 "Puyppy was able to find a live network"

Wireless: gave my ssid and wep key (used profile autoconnect)

Test wlan0--screen flashes, nothing I can read.

DHCP--network configuration of wlan0 successful

Save profile, done.

The network icon at the bottom fo the screen "blinky"? says received none.

Seamonkey browser--can't finad any websites.

192.168.1.1--can't find router.

I'm going to try ndiswrapper next.

I'm making progress.

[mothraman]

It appears that my problem now is with wep. I'll research that and see if I can solve it. If not, I'll start a new thread.

Thanks to all for your help.

[mothraman]

I am new to Linux, but have been a software developer for over 30 years. I found this whole thing to be a challenge. I am posting the results of my success here for anyone who may benefit from them. Good luck! Thanks to all who helped (actively and passively).

Details:
IBM Thinkpad i1200 series 1167-210, purchased new in 2000, with Windows 98 (just background, since I wiped the hd and only have Puppy running now).
160MB RAM, 6GB hd, 500mhz intel celeron processor
Linksys WPC11v4 PCMCIA wifi card
Router has WEP security--I had WPA-PSK, but when I wanted to resurrect this laptop, I discovered from Linksys tech support and from this forum that the card does not support it.
SSID broadcast disabled on router.
Puppy 4.0, full install to hard drive

Challenge 1:
Get the PCMCIA card recognized. The symptom was that the power light on the card did not turn on. With the help of experts here, I discovered that I need to load yenta_socket.
Solution 1: open a console window and type "modprobe yenta_socket." I later added this to the rd.local script, below, but this was the first step. The power light came on. With a little research, I learned that yenta_socket bridges from the card bus to PCI--and I've now told more than I know.

Challenge 2:
I followed the instructions found in the wireless section to use ndiswrapper to load my windows driver. Result: "Invalid driver!"
Solution 2:
I googled "WPC11v4 chipset" to find that it uses the Realtek R8180 chipset. After some forum searching I found that the R8180 driver in the network wizard ("connect" icon--lower left of my screen) was the one to use, so I did.
NOTE: I had the network wizard save this, so it loads at boot--that's why it's not in the script below.

Next step was to connect. I continued with the network wizard. The card was found, I clicked the wlan button, then wireless, where I entered the details of my connection: WEP, managed, open, gave my SSID and key. Then clicked the auto dhcp button to get an ip address. The link light on the wifi card came on.

Challenge 3:
I could not connect. "Blinky"--the network icon to the right of the speaker icon at the bottom of the screen--told me it could see the network but could not connect. I opened a console window and ran dmesg. I found a msg that rtl_ieee80211_crypt_wep was not found and that I should load it. With some searching, I found out that there are two problems:
1. that's a typo: the module name is ieee80211_crypt_wep-rtl
2. the module should have been in /lib/modules/2.6.21.7/r8180 but it wasn't, that's why it wasn't being loaded with the driver (as I understand the situation)
Solution 3:
The module, plus some others that may be needed, were in /zdrv_400.sfs (as I learned from this forum). I opened a file window, then clicked on zdrv_400.sfs it to mount it, then navigated to /mnt/+zdrv_400.sfs/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/r8180 where I found the module, and copied the entire contents of the directory to the proper location (cited above). I unloaded the driver (modprobe -r r8180) then went through the network connect, including loading the driver, again. Viola!

Challenge 4:
I wanted to have network connectivity when I boot, and not have to go through the steps above every time I re-boot.
Solution 4:
/etc/rd/rc_local is a script that is executed at boot before X starts (I am told). I used the advice on this forum to find a combination that works. There may be other combinations that also work and this combination may not work for others, but it's a start.
NOTE: one of the suggestions I found said to remove some files--
rm -f /var/lib/dpcpd/*.pid
rm -f /var/run/*.pid
before the dhcpcd command in the last executable line. I ran those from the command line when I was experimenting, before I wrote the script. The script works without them, either because they worked the 1st time or because they don't matter. Try them if this doesn't work.
ALSO: I have done a (very) little research into the dhcpcd command to see what all the options mean. Evidently "puppypc" is the puppy client name and wlan0 is the interface (could be eth0 or something else in your confguration) but I can't find anything else that applies (yet). If anyone knows, please post an answer or a link to an answer here.


#/etc/rc.d/rc_local.sh
#=lines already there===
#this file called from rc.local0
#you can edit this file
#When firewall is installed, will append lines to this file...
#===end lines already there===
#===lines added by mothraman===
#enable PCMCIA 20080829 0945
modprobe yenta_socket
sleep 5s
# Bring up the wifi 20080829 2130
ifconfig wlan0 up
# provide wep ssid and key
iwconfig wlan0 essid <your ssid here without the brackets>
#remember: mothtraman's wep is open, managed--your options in the next two lines may be different
iwconfig wlan0 key <your wep key here without the brackets> open
iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
# use dhcp to get an ip address
dhcpcd -t 30 -h puppypc -d wlan0
#done
#===end lines added by mothraman===