Blacklisting bcm43xx
 

Hello,

I am running Mandriva 2007 Power Pack on my laptop. My laptop comes with bcm4318 wireless card, and I use ndiswrapper to work with it.

Mandriva comes with it's own module for my wifi, which is bcm43xx. The problem is, ever time system boots, it loads bcm43xx by default, instead of ndiswrapper module. I have to manually set it back to ndiswrapper everytime I boot, which is kind of annoying.

When I was using other distro before, modprobe usually come with a blacklist function, which is in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist where you can blacklist module prevent kernel from loading it. However, I cannot find this file nor anything simular under mandriva07PP. Also I tried adding my own /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist but no good.

Any suggestions how to blacklist hardware under mandriva 2007 please? Am I missing some packages? Appriciate your help.

salud,

D

Not sure on Mandriva. You can create the directory /etc/modprobe.d and then create a text file in it can call it blacklist. Worth a shot.

Brian

It is usually best to configure your hardware using the tools provided by Mandriva which includes a Network Configuration Utility in MCC (The Mandriva Control Center). I do not use a wireless connection here on my desktop workstation, but (IIUC) wireless configuration is supported.

If all else fails, the files that control module installation are /etc/modprobe.conf and /etc/modprobe.preload.

HTH,

You could always recompile the kernel without the modules you don't want.

I would choose only the ones I specifically don't want to load and thats all.

Recompiling the kernel methods can be found here under tutorials.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...Fedora_Systems

Recompiling your installed kernel, use config old and you won't have to find a new kernel as mentioned in the first part.

If you selected Dev at the install stage, most, if not all, of the packages required should be installed.

This tute is a bit old, you might find a better and more recent one with kernel-doc(version number).rpm (on the mandy disk) You will need the kernel-sources and ncursors-dev.

If you've been able to install 3d graphics, you've probably got all the packages you'll need. GW

Thanks for the replies. I tried every possible files and MCC but still no good, mandriva decided to load bcm43xx regardless. Recompiling kernel sounds good to me. Since I never done it before, gonna ask a few questions, what's difference between compiling the module in to kernel and load it using modprobe? is the first one faster?

Usually there is little benefit if as a module or in the kernel. If in the kernel the kernel image is larger. If it is a module you have the ability to unload it but this seems to be one of your problems. Making it stay unloaded. One other benefit is if a portion of the kernel needs changed and if it is a module then it can be pulled and a different one can be loaded.

Brian

Thanks Brian, your answer clears a lot of questions for me. hum, I am thinking of something else, does deleting/renaming bcm43xx module(the file itself) help?

You might want to grep your /etc/modprobe.conf and the files in /etc/modprobe.d/.

Look for a line that says something like:
install bcm43xx
If you find it comment it out.
Using grep on all the files in /etc may reveal other config files such as a list for early loaded modules.

Running "depmod -a" and then "mkinitrd" may help as well if it results in a bcm43xx module being removed from the initrd ramdisk.

If you decide recompile your kernel without bcm43xx support, run "make oldconfig" to first replicate your current .config settings so that you only need to make one change.

Never done it but as jschiwal says delete the bcm module from /lib/modules/*******/ where ever it is located and then run ' depmod -a ' to update the /boot/system.map file for the version of kernel running. It is used so the system knows where modules exist. Not sure if mkinitrd needs to run afterwards or not.

Brian

That will fix it so that the bcm43xx module is not ever loaded, even if you run 'modprobe bcm43xx' from the commandline.

Enjoy!