ndiswrapper troubles: "Failed to allocate DMA coherent memory."
 

Hello,

I try to install the last release of ndiswrapper on my laptop, but when i do the modprobe, I get the following message:

Failed to allocate DMA coherent memory. Windows driver requested 132480 bytes of un-cached memory

My PC Card is an US Robotics 5410 (USR805410), the chip is a Texas Instruments ACX-111.

My distribution is SuSE Pro 9.2.

Thanks for help.

I believe suse 9.2 provides it's own version of ndiswrapper (most likely older than the one you're trying to use) and I know it also provides an older version of the acx_pci driver which is a native linux driver for your card, which will no doubt not load unless they've decided to provide the firmware also, which is doubtful. Look for these older, provided modules in /lib/modules/`uname -r`/extra, they were both there on my 9.1 installation, I doubt they've been removed for 9.2. You'll need to move them to a location that is not in or under /lib/modules/`uname -r` and then run depmod. ndiswrapper's default install puts it in a different directory so it should be fine if you've already run the make install.

version 1.0rc2 of the ndiswrapper works nicely for me on similar and newer kernels than suse 9.2 is using with both my acx111 cardbus cards, so this should not be too hard to get working for you. Can you outline the steps you've taken so far to get ndiswrapper working, and also what version you've been working with?

It would also be good to see the output of this command (typed at a konsole as root with your card plugged in): lsmod, in this way you'll know only one module is attempting to support your card. Look for both ndiswrapper and acx_pci in the output, and hope that you don't see them both ;)

I should also mention that Linuxant.com's commercial offering (DriverLoader which is also a "wrapper" that will load your Windows' ndis driver into the kernel for use with your usr card) is now free for users of TI based devices since TI has reached a licensing agreement with them. I don't know if they will support the free license, but it might be worth a look.