I tried installing the realtek 8180 driver in my Slackware 10.1 set-up (2.4.29 -- HP Omni 800ct -- trying to make a little appliance).

The insmod with the rtl8180_24x.o didn't go, so I ran Make and Make Install. This seemed to go OK, except for the Kernel version complaints (which some posts seemed to imply could be mainly ignored) -- warnings, no errors.

When re-booting with the card installed, the boot process hangs (Oop 0002 -- don't have all the details, since that machine isn't attached to a network when it happens, and only has a floppy, etc.) right after the PCMCIA detection area. I know PCMCIA works cause I had a wired network card working fine in the slot. Also - if I remove the Trendware TEW226 card that I'm trying to get working, then the boot proceeds normally.

I am thinking of trying ndiswrapper next (sounds like it works good for people). Before I do that I'd like to know:

1. Should I do something to Unmake-Uninstall that realtek driver? I've seen there is a remove module command, but the module doesn't seem to be listed when I boot without the card and the boot process hangs with the card, so ...

2. Can I just find where the rtl8180_24x.o file got placed and simply delete it? Or is there an entry in some other file about installed devices?

3. Is my Kernel now broken? Should I reboot with the rescue diskette and replace the Kernel?

4. Do I need to go all the way back and re-install the system? Modestly painful, but possible, since I am just setting this up.

Any help would be most appreciated. And please excuse me if the question on how to undo what I've done belongs in the newbie area. (This Linux wireless stuff makes audio look easy ... probably my fault for messing with old hardware.)

Thanks

1) Some kind programmers include uninstall commands in the makefile in which case make uninstall might work. For future reference, you might have a look at checkinstall (you can get a package in the Slackware extras directory). You use checkinstall in place of the make install command and instead of installing, checkinstall creates a Slackware package you can then install and uninstall with Slack's normal tools.

2) The business bit of that driver is going to be in your /lib/modules/kernelversion directory somewhere. And yes, you can just delete it. If any of your config files used this module, they are obviously going to complain, but you can just comment out those steps in the appropriate file.

3) NO! Your kernel is just fine. That is the great thing about modules, you can add and delete stuff without it affecting your kernel in the slightest. The only problem can arise if another module depends on the one you are deleting and that really isn't the case here.

4) NO! You really shouldn't have to re-install anything. In fact, you don't really have to delete the driver you've been playing with either. As long as you don't load that module, it really isn't going to affect much. Odds are if you have one of the stock Slackware kernels, you have a bunch of modules lying around that you don't use and it doesn't hurt anything.

Thanks for the reply - I ended up just deleting the realtek.o file in my modules and all is well as far as the hang when booting with the card in.

I am now working my way through ndiswrapper. Learning that the 1.0 version doesn't compile happily on the 2.4 Kernel (using this since we're talking old hardware and 2.6 needs more memory). The 0.12 ndiswrapper compiles fine on 2.4 Slack 10.1. I just need to figure out what settings need to be there in iwconfig. I am worried, though, since ndiswrapper is sending up hangchecks and resetting wlan0 when I try and modprobe -- and I can't say I've seen the connect light yet.

If this goes on much longer I will be trying to buy a Prism based card, since I see this is supported in the stock Slackware wireless module tree.

On a 2.4 kernel, you might even try dropping back as far as ndiswrapper 0.7. Somewhere around .10 or .11, the ndiswrapper group seems to have made some changes to accomodate the 2.6.10 kernel, and that made for trouble for earlier kernels.

For the iwconfig bit, really all you need are the SSID of your AP and a WEP key if it uses one. Once you have those established, you can use dhcpcd to request an IP address.

If you need a script, here is one I posted a while ago, but have used with good success

Thanks again. I think ndiswrapper is working because the card responds to iwconfig. I have been trying something that looks close to your script:

modprobe ndiswrapper hangcheck_interval=-1
(if I don't set the hangcheck I get errors)
iwconfig wlan0 essid (MAC from card)
iwconfig wlan0 mode ad-hoc
(at this point the link lights - if I change to managed
the link light goes out - ad-hoc has worked on my
other machines. I know this makes me "open", but
I am in an environment where this shouldn't be too
risky)
iwconfig wlan0 ap any
ifconfig wlan0 up
dhcpcd -t 10 -d wlan0
(echos the card MAC and thinks for a bit and
then comes back)
ping [another machine on the network, pingable] gives
network unreachable

iwconfig gives:

lo no wireless extensions
irda0 no wireless extensions
wlan0 -- info. that was put in with iwconfig (ad-hoc, etc.)

ifconfig gives:

only a report for lo and only showing loopback

I thought I was close when the link light went on. I am about ready to chalk this whole deal up to me being crazy and just run some wire. I mean that would take me about 15 min. or so and I have ports on the router ... no connectors though ... always something.

Some other notes about the new distributions on old hardware:

1. xfce is a nice lite X11 environment - but comes with Mozilla, which needs a ton of memory - this post is painful.
2. Dillo is a fast lite browser - but seems to have some issue with downloading files and also seemed unable to allow me to log into linuxquestions.org - so I am forced to use Mozilla.
3. The editors that come with xfce, like vim have a copy command, but it doesn't seem to carry the clipboard over to Mozilla -- so that is why the output from iwconfig and ifconfig have been excerpted by me.

Uh, I don't think this is correct. The SSID for an access point is usually a text name you give it, or a default name assigned at the factory. Unless you've used the MAC address as the SSID, you need to have a look at what your access point AP is acutally called. For example, out of the box, all linksys wireless routers have an SSID of linksys so the correct command would be iwconfig wlan0 essid linksys.

This is confusing me even more than the previous bit. If you are trying to connect to an access point, this is just plain wrong. To connect to an access point you have to use either Auto or Managed mode instead of ad-hoc. Ad-hoc only works if you are trying to connect to another PC (like a crossover cable). If you are really connecting other computers this way I can honestly say I don't understand your network setup. My understanding is that having an ad-hoc network wouldn't allow you to access the net at all.

This is definitely part of the problem. You should see an IP address listed when this comes back. If you're not getting anything back, odds are you aren't making a connection to the access point. And again, while I may be wrong about this, I think the ad-hoc bit is getting in the way here. The output of ifconfig is sort of confirming that DHCP didn't do the job, although I would expect an entry for wlan0 with no IP address.

For a reasonably fast and light browser, I can recommend Firefox. Definitely more lightweight than Mozilla and pretty easy to install in Slackware. It will work in any of the standard X environments that come with Slackware. For a graphical editor, if you did a full install, gedit or kate would do the trick. Personally I like JEdit, but it is a Java app and that annoys some people.

OK - I was a bit confused if the SSID was for the access point or the card. I went to one of the Windows machines that is using a PCI version of this Trendware card and saw that the AP was listed as "Wireless". I need to dig around and see if I can find any of my (lost) notes from when I put the AP in in the first place.

All I know is that I have plugged windoze machines in and they just seem to find the AP and connect. I think I needed to use "Infrstructure" as the network type on these machines, but this doesn't seem to be an option for iwconfig. I recall getting my Sharp Zaurus with a 3-com W/L card working too. Maybe I just have a bum PC card.

If I set mode to auto, then anything I have in for essid gets set to 00:00:00:00:00:00. If I set a name for essid, then the mode gets turned back to "ad-hoc" when I use ... iwconfig wlan0.

In either case if I try and ping a network machine I get "Network is unreachable". Ifconfig only shows entries for lo, while iwconfig shows entries for lo, irda0 and wlan0.

If I pop my Netgear FA411 wired card in and boot, it finds the network, internet, etc. no problem. If I do a ifconfig with that card in, I see lo and eth0 (or it might be eth1 -- not both and I can't check it right now). Anyhow, it looks like another network connection gets defined with the wired card in. Maybe having that card defined somewhere is messing up the wireless attempt.

I was thinking about Firefox - I use it on other machines and am sold, although some posts made it sound like it might still use up a fair bit of memory (the 800ct has 32MEG !!). Yes to Jedit -- again I use it all the time for SQL and Perl coding. A great editor - printing a little slow and odd, but overall excellent (and I think the memory overhead might be a bit much on this machine). It will be all console once it is set up.

Does the router have a web interface? Most of the ones I know about do. If it does, you can probably pull the SSID from the router rather than trying to find old notes.

Infrastructure is just another name for Managed or Auto. Some of the behavior you describe could be the result of not having the WEP key set. Are you using encryption on this AP? If so, you may need to set the key first, then the SSID. Another trick to try is if you can get into the router's config pages, you could try broadcasting the SSID if it isn't already. In theory it isn't quite as secure, but it really isn't that big a deal to broadcast your SSID if you have encryption set. I've also seen situations where you can set the SSID easily at boot time from a script, but when you try to do it from a console, it doesn't seem to take. Since you're using 10.1, you could try using the /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless and rc.wireless.conf pair and see if that can configure the card.

Yet another thing to try is have a look through the ndiswrapper wiki for your card and see if they suggest a different set of Windows drivers. With ndiswrapper newer Windows drivers aren't necessarily better.