modprobe ndiswrapper system freeze on suse 9.1
 

I've recently installed SuSE 9.1 onto a laptop so it will dual boot with xp. In trying to set up my wireless card using ndiswrapper, I run into a problem with the command modprobe ndiswrapper. The system just freezes. I'm not sure where to start because I'm not exactly sure what's happening. Is there a log file I can check?

All my searches just tell me how to get ndiswrapper going. The lq tutorial is good too, I just can't ndiswrapper loaded.

The laptop is sony with a 900mhz celeron and 256mb ram.

I'm pretty sure i've read something about that on the ndiswrapper website before, but i didn't take much notice 'cos i didn't have that problem :)

I'd check /var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages and see if there is anything there. They are the most likely locations for a log entry. There have been lots of reports of this sort of problem, but is usually happened on some flavor of Red Hat and frequently was related to the fact that RH had 4K stacks compiled into their standard kernel and not all windows drivers could live with that.

Hangdog42,

I decided to ditch SuSE on the laptop and installed FC2. While compiling ndiswrapper, it did detect the 4k stacks and told me not to whine when it crashes. Now that I'm certain that's the problem (certain on SuSE too), any suggestions?

Can I change the kernel to 8k stacks? I've never tweaked with the kernel before.

I also found a realtek RTL8180L driver for linux, but it (and a related tutorial on this site) says it will only work with kernel 2.4 or earlier. I'm using 2.6.5.

Can anyone make a suggestion on which route to take? I can also get my hands on wlan card with the intersil prism chipset, if that's a better option. I could barely get that to work with windows, though.

Yes you can, but if you haven't built a kernel before, this probably isn't the time to start. The good news is that Linuxant seems to compile kernel for FC that solve this problem. You can find the RPMs here . Since I run Slackware, I've never used these kernels, but I have seen some people here at LQ use them successfully.

Sorry for the long delay. I've had some family members with health issues.

I installed the linuxant kernel rpm on fedora core 2 (there wasn't a match available for my kernel, though). No luck.

I did a fresh install of fedora core 3, but the default kernel 2.6.9-1.667 that was on the dvd I could grab still has the 4k stack. I found a linuxant 16k stack rpm for that kernel and distro and installed it. I installed ndiswrapper-1.0 after changing the kernel and installed the lastest realtek 8180 driver. The system still freezes when I try to load the module using /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper.

When i check lspci the card shows up and ndiswrapper -l shows the driver and hardware present. I'm at a dead end. It should be working now, shouldn't it?

I've also got another card with a prism chipset that is listed by the manufacturer as compatible with linux-wlan-ng. I can't get that installed though.

Anyone have ideas where to go from here? This is the last hang-up before I ditch XP completely.

Thanks

After you reboot from a freeze, have you checked the logs to see if anything is there about what the system was trying to do when it froze? It might be helpful. About the only other suggestion I can make at this point are pretty substantial work. You could either compile your own kernel so you can get away from the 4K stacks, or you could switch distros. Red Hat distros and ndiswrapper are frequently not a good fit.

Here's my lspci output:

Hers's my /var/log/messages output (when I try to load the module):

The ndiswrapper -l command shows the driver and hardware present when I try to modprobe ndiswrapper.

I'm not very familiar with reading logs, but it looks like the module actually gets loaded. The system just freezes up after. Also, the "session closed for user root" line seems curious to me. Does that mean my superuser session ended? Is that normal?

It seems everything should work, it just doesn't. I guess my next question would be do you know any good howtos on building my own kernel? It seems like that is my next course of action.

Sorry for the delay. I was away for a bit without internet access......


If you look at the first part of that line you'll see the pam_unix statement. PAM is an authentication program and it looks to me like it is started by su to root and then that su session is shut down. I don't think it is anything to worry about and it probably isn't related to the modprobe crash problem.

You are right, it does look like the ndiswrapper module loads fine, it just hangs when you try to use it. That does suggest to me that the 4K stacks are the problem. So if you want to compile your own kernel, I would suggest running through the Suse forum here for distro specific advice. Otherwise, I've stolen a lot of good advice and written one you can find here but it is somewhat Slackware specific, particularly in how to modify LILO. I believe Suse uses GRUB as the bootloader so you'll have to find out how to modify GRUB.

You also might have a look at the site snecklifter references. It has kernels for RH, and it may have kernels for Suse.

Thanks. I'll check those out.

My system used to work fine, wifi and all. Now I have this problem, inexplicably.

I'm all for Linux and everything, but with a catch twenty-two for every solution, you think that maybe this platform needs some kind of organization.

The problem isn't with linux, the problem is with wireless card manufacturers. For cards made by manufacturers who either write their own drivers or release the specs for their cards, linux support is just fine. However, a large number of manufacturers won't write drivers and won't release specs, so hacks like ndiswrapper are the end result. So if you don't like the way your wireless card is supported, please vent at your card vendor, they're the ones responsible for the mess.