I am using RedHat 8 with the latest updates and a Netgear MA401 wireless card. The problem I am having is that after using the wireless network card for some time or during heavy use such as downloading a file, something causes a process to get caught in an infinite loop.

When the card begins to hang I noticed that the CPU is pegged out and in order to fix the problem I have to restart the laptop. Unfortunately the shutdown process does not work so I have to take the batteries out in order to shutdown.

Due to this problem I have been forced to go back to w2k . I am a newbie to Linux and in the process of converting to linux so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

rhsam

There is problem with the orinoco driver that comes with RedHat 8.0. I had the same problem. Check out /var/log/messages. In there towards the bottom you should see "Error 110 - Tx rriting to bad BAP" or something similar. If you see that, download orinoco version 13 which should be available here:

http://airsnort.shmoo.com/orinocoinfo.html

While you're at it, patch it so you can get monitor mode.... read the page that I linked you to.

To fix that problem, you don't need to restart. Just hard restart pcmcia and that should fix it. Every now and then I actually have to remove the orinoco module and reload it. With version 13 you should rarely get Tx errors.

bash2.05$ ifconfig eth1 down
bash2.05$ /etc/init.d/pcmcia restart

or to remove the orinoco drivers then restart

bash2.05$ ifconfig eth1 down
bash2.05$ rmmod orinoco_cs
bash2.05$ rmmod orinoco
bash2.05$ /etc/init.d/pcmcia restart

You might need to run ifup eth1 if you aren't pulling an IP after restarting pcmcia.

Good Luck

Ok, I downloaded a patch from http://ozlabs.org/people/dgibson/dldwd/ along with the version 13 driver. How do I apply the patch? It has been a while...

Can anyone help me out here? I just want to know where I need to apply the patch.

I figured out what I was doing wrong.