Realtek RTL8185 -- rtl8180 module locking system up on Slack 13
 

Someone gave me an old Compaq Presario 8000, which I reluctantly took, as I tend to end up with more computers than I use and more or less end up acting as a disposal agent. It's a 2.4Ghz machine, which will suffice for whatever I felt like installing on it.

I have a generic wifi pci card with a Realtek RTL8185 chipset in it, which I never used and thought I'd set up that computer with it. Hadn't installed Slackware 13 on anything, and it's a distro I like so I went at it.

Install went well, no problems there, but I've used Slackware for about 9 years so I'm readily familiar with that end o' things.

I found the rtl8180 module to be causing problems. It would load on boot, but wouldn't bring up a wireless interface. I was able to remove the module with 'rmmod rtl8180' well enough, but when I would load it again with 'modprobe rtl8180', the system would lock. Tried that a few times, same result.

I ran across mention of a driver on Realtek's web site, so I downloaded and installed it. That one is identified as 'r8180'. I added 'rtl8180' to the module blacklist to prevent it from being loaded at boot, and proceeded to set up wpa_supplicant.conf for my WPA-PSK connection. Came up without a hitch.

The connection is stable thus far, with a respectable link quality.

The Realtek driver can be found here.

I thought I might document my solution here in case someone else runs across the same issue that I experienced.

I'm thinking of slapping another wireless NIC in that computer, or perhaps testing with multihoming possibly. This computer will probably end up as an AP for relaying my wireless traffic to an AP downstairs. I have one USB NIC (Alfa AWUS036S)with a 5dB antenna that has a strong signal, but the ones of more a common variety could use a little help.

One of the obvious drawbacks to this route is the fact that any time the kernel is updated, I'll have to recompile the r8180 module. This machine will be used primarily for routing purposes, and overall I'm not too worried about this. It won't even have a monitor on it.

John

thanks
 

i had the same issue. downloaded the new driver you linked to, did a make and make install, and added to the module blacklist. after a reboot, everything worked

ok, this is my second time through this... so i'll add what i did.

i have a fresh install of slack13.0 i just finished installing, because the machine i originally installed it on for my children was too slow (P3 500Mhz with 300 megs of ram...) so after a fresh install of slack13, i installed wicd..... wrong answer.... it locked up during boot after that. to get the machine to boot, i removed the wireless card, and doing that allowed it to boot. i removed wicd ( removepkg wicd ). then i downloaded the rtl8185 driver linked in the message above. after decompressing it (the instructions are in the readme file) i did a make and a make install. the next step was to add to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file. then i reinstalled wicd using installpkg. next, i shut the machine down and reinstalled the wireless card and booted the machine back up. after booting, i went into x, and brought up the wicd connection manager and set my parameters for the card and access point. the reason for going into x to set up the card, is a couple of years ago i had trouble getting a wireless card to work, and i went to the wicd web page and told the developers i was trying to set up y wireless card, but every time i edited the wicd config files, they reverted to what they had been previously. their answer was that the only way to configure wicd is from the GUI tool, and the config files aren't meant to be edited by hand...

Hi,

I believe the wicd-curses will allow you to configure without issues. I no longer use wicd for my network.
:hattip:

once it's working right, i have no trouble with wicd, the issue here was actually a card driver that didn't work with the linux kernel. once the driver was put into use (like with wicd or any other network manager) it caused a hardware conflict. the first time i had problems with the rtl8185 card, it actually seemed to cause random IRQ conflicts with other hardware, ultimately with the system locking up.