either usb or wireless

Kirmonkey · 01-06-2007, 06:56 AM

Hi there,

Bear with me here, this is an odd one...

Broadband has arrived at the monkey household and I have been working on setting up the wireless network. This has proved to be quite easy using madwifi and their well written instructions.

However...

Using a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7310GW laptop I am faced with a terrible choice as indicated in my title. Due to a wobbly BIOS I have to pass the command ACPI=OFF to the kernel at boot. This means that the integrated Atheros AR5005G wireless card is not assigned an ICQ number at boot, dmesg showing the following message:

Quote:

SCSI subsystem initialized
ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
ath_hal: 0.9.18.0 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
wlan: 0.8.4.2 (0.9.3)
ath_rate_sample: 1.2 (0.9.3)
ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (0.9.3)
PCI: Enabling device 0000:00:06.0 (0000 -> 0002)
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 0000:00:06.0. Please try using pci=biosirq.
wifi%d: request_irq failed
ts: Compaq touchscreen protocol output

If I unplug my USB mouse and remove to ACPI=OFF command at boot then dmesg shows:

Quote:

ts: Compaq touchscreen protocol output
wlan: 0.8.4.2 (0.9.3)
ath_rate_sample: 1.2 (0.9.3)
ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (0.9.3)
PCI: Enabling device 0000:00:06.0 (0000 -> 0002)
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:06.0[A] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
wifi0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
wifi0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
wifi0: H/W encryption support: WEP AES AES_CCM TKIP
wifi0: mac 7.8 phy 4.5 radio 5.6
wifi0: Use hw queue 1 for WME_AC_BE traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 0 for WME_AC_BK traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 2 for WME_AC_VI traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 3 for WME_AC_VO traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 8 for CAB traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 9 for beacons
wifi0: Atheros 5212: mem=0x1c000000, irq=169
Capability LSM initialized

And we have our all round the house internet (And I'm sure the neigbours appreciate the free internet too)

I want to be able to use both USB devices, specifically my mouse and use wireless too. One solution that didn't work for me is located here:

http://www.mepis.org/node/12174

Ideas appreciated...

kilgoretrout · 01-06-2007, 10:18 AM

Your link clearly indicates this is a kernel bug with some debian kernels. If that's the case and the irqpoll or pci=biosirq workarounds don't work for you, there's really not much you can do other than look for another workaround or try a newer/different kernel. For example, according to this:

http://www.mail-archive.com/acpi-bug.../msg05305.html

the problem did not occur with the 2.6.16 kernel.

You could try fooling around with your bios settings as well to see if that has any effect but it doesn't look like that would help.

Kirmonkey · 01-07-2007, 04:58 PM

Good news, a success.

Following your advice I upgraded from Sarge to Etch, something I can now easily do with broadband, and changed my boot commands as so:

Removed ACPI=OFF and added IRQPOLL

All worked fine, wireless internet is a bobby dazzler and Mrs Monkey is very pleased.