Wireless on my Sony srx77 with Red Hat 8
 

Hiya,

I just installed Red Hat 8.0 on my sony laptop (srx77) and everything works fine except for the built in mini pci wireless (orinoco). I've been searching the web now for a few days and it seems that I need to patch my kernel with the acpi patch.

I downloaded the acpi patch from
sourceforge but the patch keeps failing. I did more investigating on the web and i read somewhere on this forum that i'm suppose to have a vanilla kernel which redhat isn't cause it patches the kernel that comes on the cd.

Ok so i thought i'd get a kernel form kernel.org which i did and downloaded 2.4.20 and i applied the acpi patch on it successfully. When i rebooted it hat errors:

VFS: Cannot open root device "LABEL=/" or 00:00
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:00
(in order for me to reboot , unplug from the ac and also remove my battery)

so i searched the web and found this info:

---------------------------------------------
Note for RedHat users: At the first boot of my new kernel the system was not working properly because it was not able to mount the filesystems. I discovered that this is due to the format of the /etc/fstab lines as set up by the RedHat installation procedure. RedHat uses a format like:
LABEL=/ / ext2 defaults 1 1

I.e.: uses partition labels. This is apparently not supported by plain vanilla kernels. My quick (and maybe dirty) solution is to modify the fstab using something like:

/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults 1 1

I.e.: use partition explicit names.

---------------------------------

So i modified my fstab and changed the change and i get the same error, so i rebooted again and booted with my orginal kernel and now i get:

Checking root filesystem
fsck.ext3/dev/hda1:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem ...

modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module block-major-2


-----------------------

sorry this message is so long, i'm sorta new at this. i don't mind reinstalling but i'd really like to be able to get my wireless working.

Thanks in advance.

Dude, as far as I know, the Orinoco mini-pci card is serviced by the orinoco_pci module, no kernel tinkering required. I think RedHat was smart enough to precompile it for you. It should just be a matter of:

modprobe orinoco_pci

Then check dmesg to see if it registered the device. If the module kicks errors, post back. If the module isn't there, you can find a link to where to download the source from my bookmarks. Post back if you can't figure out how to unpack and compile it.

The reason RedHat probably didn't do this right off the bat is that the orinoco mini-pci is a little rare and it didn't know what to load for it, or more to the point, kudzo didn't.

acpi deals with power management... which might vaguely have something to do with the card, but I don't think so, what link aimed you there?

About recovering your install, uh... try using the RH install CD as a rescue disk, I don't exactly understand what you did with your /etc/fstab, but if you haven't gotten too attached, re-installing is quick and easy.

Cheers,

Finegan

Hi, thanks for the reply. I think the main problem is that i can't get an IRQ assigned for my mini pci (orinoco). I ran dmesg and i got this:

Linux Kernel Card Services 3.1.22
options: [pci] [cardbus] [pm]
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 01:02.0. Please try using
pci=biosirq.
PCI: Enabling device 01:05.0 (0000 -> 0002)
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 01:05.0. Please try using
pci=biosirq.
Yenta IRQ list 08b8, PCI irq0
Socket status: 30000006
Yenta IRQ list 0000, PCI irq0
Socket status: 30000011
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 1254
cs: IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff: excluding 0x4d0-0x4d7
cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff: clean.
cs: memory probe 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff: clean.
hermes.c: 5 Apr 2002 David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
orinoco.c 0.11b (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
orinoco_cs.c 0.11b (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au> and
others)
orinoco_cs: RequestIRQ: Resource in use




---
Thanks in advance.

hmm, really... I think you can give the orinoco module an irq argument, hopefully.

cat /proc/interrupts and look for an irq that isn't in use. Then try:

modprobe orinoco_pci irq=5

for instance, and see what dmesg says, heck try the ones that are in use, all of 'em.

Cheers,

Finegan

hi,

I get this error when i do a modprobe orinoco_pci

modprobe orinoco_pci
/lib/modules/2.4.18-19.8.0/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.o:
init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters,
including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.18-19.8.0/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.o:
insmod
/lib/modules/2.4.18-19.8.0/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.o
failed
/lib/modules/2.4.18-19.8.0/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.o:
insmod orinoco_pci failed




Here is a link that i was following for my laptop:

Thanks again!

Oh, whoops orinoco_cs is the module that covers mini-PCI, sorry, forgot about that, its a little non-standard, yeah, try that instead with the IRQ arguments.

Cheers,

Finegan

Hi, Ok i tried it and i got no error messages. Now what do i do?

no errors, and dmesg is clean? rockin!

ifconfig eth0 up
iwconfig eth0 essid nameofnetwork
iwconfig eth0 enc 234567890
dhclient eth0

you might not even need to give it a networkname, if its a wide open router you can probably just give it the dhclient command.

This is assuming that the device got the name eth0, if you have onboard vanilla ethernet, then the wireless card is probably eth1. If dhclient bogs out and you don't get a lease, then try statically:

ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.23
route add default gw 192.168.1.1

Assuming the router is using that subnet and that its IP is 192.168.1.1, which is the default of course.

Cheers,

Finegan

I think i'm going to do a fresh reinstall. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks again for you help.

i downloaded a vanilla kernel and applied the acpi patches. the sony laptops seems to be really dependent on acpi even for the mini pci to be assigned an irq. well it works now. thanks for the help. now i just got to look for like battery meter etc.. so i can tell how much battery i have in linux.