Wireless Support ipw2200 ipw2915

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Wireless Support ipw2200 ipw2915
started by: sml

Posted by sml on July 17 2007,13:14

Will it ever happen? Apart from a very old version.

As you can probably see if you search the details of when I registered here and the threads that I have posted, I have been interested in wireless support for some time - with a reasonably recent version.

Oh and btw what happened to DSL-N? Seems to have slowed.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on July 17 2007,14:47

You could try building them with DSL 4.0 alpha1 and reporting back your findings (re: ipw2200 module)

Posted by wirechief on July 21 2007,01:35

Its interesting Puppy Linux has support for ipw2200 and many other major distro's, it is popular and a must have for wifi.
Although i realize you have other priorities.

Posted by roberts on July 22 2007,00:56

This has been answered so many times before.

This distribution and the volunteer work that I do, is not a paid or commercial venture.
This distribution does not have a team of developers.

I do not own or have access to everything that is new or currently popular.

So it should be common sense to realize that ...

It will happen when someone in the community of DSL users who happens to own or have access to such device decides to make and then contribute the module.

Other small distributions have community contributed code and modules.

To make posts about other distributions (when they are not 49MB or even the same kernel/modules) and a personal attack on my priorities is really not helpful. Doing such is actually very rude.

If you own such device, instead of being rude, why don't you step up to the plate and contribute.

Posted by WDef on July 22 2007,20:47

fwiw I personally didn't read these posters as trying to be rude or attacking any priorities. They're just trying to get their wireless to work.

I intend to have another crack at trying to compile this driver soon, but all I got last time were various errors tthat were difficult for me to interpret.

Posted by WDef on July 23 2007,09:22

Here's the tail end of the errors I get trying to replicate Tempestuous' build of the ipw2200 driver for 2.4.31. It might make sense to replicate that build first.

As I recall I got similar errors with 2.4.26, but I can't recall if these were the same.

(Here I'm assuming Tempestous did actually compile this on a livecd boot of dsl-2.1b, and not on eg Woody or Slackware or RH9 with the same kernel or something).

This is using ipw2200-1.0.1 with the backport to 2.4.xx patch applied:
ipw2200-1.0.1-3.patch

which was the llast version of this patch provided for 1.0.1 ipw2200.

It looks like some headers are missing. But which?

Code Sample

<snip>
rdirq.h:6
from /mnt/sda1/SOURCES/KERNEL2.4.31/linux-2.4.31/include/linux/ interrupt.h:11,
from /mnt/sda1/SOURCES/KERNEL2.4.31/linux-2.4.31/include/linux/ netdevice.h:489,
from ipw2200.h:41,
from ipw2200.c:33:
/mnt/sda1/SOURCES/KERNEL2.4.31/linux-2.4.31/include/asm/hw_irq.h:28: `NR_IRQS' u ndeclared here (not in a function)
/mnt/sda1/SOURCES/KERNEL2.4.31/linux-2.4.31/include/asm/hw_irq.h:31: `NR_IRQS' u ndeclared here (not in a function)
ipw2200.c: In function `proc_set_debug_level':
ipw2200.c:685: parse error before `char'
ipw2200.c:688: `p' undeclared (first use in this function)
ipw2200.c:688: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
ipw2200.c:688: for each function it appears in.)
ipw2200.c:692: `val' undeclared (first use in this function)
ipw2200.c: In function `proc_get_nic_type':
ipw2200.c:764: parse error before `type'
ipw2200.c:766: `type' undeclared (first use in this function)
ipw2200.c:768: warning: unreachable code at beginning of switch statement
ipw2200.c:757: warning: unused variable `p'
ipw2200.c: In function `dump_error_log':
ipw2200.c:804: parse error before `char'
ipw2200.c:806: `p' undeclared (first use in this function)
ipw2200.c: In function `dump_event_log':
ipw2200.c:840: parse error before `char'
ipw2200.c:842: `p' undeclared (first use in this function)
ipw2200.c: In function `proc_get_rf_kill':
ipw2200.c:1273: parse error before `int'
ipw2200.c:1275: `val' undeclared (first use in this function)
ipw2200.c:1262: warning: unused variable `priv'
ipw2200.c: In function `ipw_radio_kill_sw':
ipw2200.c:1296: warning: implicit declaration of function `schedule_task'
ipw2200.c: In function `ipw_get_fw':
ipw2200.c:2759: warning: passing arg 3 of `request_firmware' from incompatible p ointer type
ipw2200.c: In function `ipw_gather_stats':
ipw2200.c:3644: warning: duplicate `const'
ipw2200.c:3644: warning: duplicate `const'
ipw2200.c:3644: warning: duplicate `const'
ipw2200.c:3644: warning: duplicate `const'
ipw2200.c:3644: warning: duplicate `const'
ipw2200.c:3644: warning: duplicate `const'
ipw2200.c:3644: warning: duplicate `const'
ipw2200.c: In function `ipw_wpa_set_encryption':
ipw2200.c:5564: warning: implicit declaration of function `__MOD_INC_USE_COUNT'
ipw2200.c: In function `ipw_pci_probe':
ipw2200.c:8442: warning: implicit declaration of function `flush_scheduled_tasks '
make[2]: *** [ipw2200.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/mnt/hda3/IPW2200_SOURCES/ipw2200-1.0.1'
make[1]: *** [_mod_/mnt/hda3/IPW2200_SOURCES/ipw2200-1.0.1] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/mnt/sda1/SOURCES/KERNEL2.4.31/linux-2.4.31'
make: *** [modules] Error 2

Posted by WDef on July 23 2007,10:49

The errors begin with:

Code Sample

/mnt/sda1/SOURCES/KERNEL2.4.31/linux-2.4.31/include/asm/mpspec.h:6: mach_mpspec.
h: No such file or directory

and continue with the general theme of being unable to find headers contained in linux-2.4.31/include/asm-i386/mach-default

as if that directory were not included, before hitting all the undeclared errors.

I tried symlinking those files into linux-2.4.31/include/asm-i386, and synlinking /usr/include/asm to this dir, but it makes no difference.

Before anyone suggests it, these sources do no have a ./configure script so I suspect the makefile would need to be hacked to pass the equivalent of CPPFLAGS to gcc to make sure these headers are found, if that indeed is actually the problem.

Anyone up to this?

Posted by WDef on July 23 2007,11:50

OK, I've applied two alleged fixes for similar errors in other builds found via google, viz.

Quote

Chnge the following:

/usr/src/linux/include/asm/mpspec.h
In line 6 change: <mach_mpspec.h> to: <asm/mach-default/mach_mpspec.h>

/usr/src/linux/include/asm/smp.h
In line 71 change: <mach_apicdef.h> to: <asm/mach-default/mach_apicdef.h>

(from < http://forum.paragon-software.com/customer/viewtopic.php?=&p=902 > )

and I've inserted an explicit includes line in the Makefile to make sure it is pointing at the kernel sources includes:

Quote

<snip>
EXTRA_CFLAGS := -I$(KSRC)/include/linux

ifneq ($(CONFIG_IPW_DEBUG),)
EXTRA_CFLAGS += -g -Wa,-adhlms=$@.lst
endif
<snip>

Then use make KSRC=/path/to/mysources

But still get exactly the same error. It just doesn't see all the headers.

EDIT: I think there's soemthing wrong with the Makefile, but I don't know what.

Posted by tempestuous on Sep. 07 2007,05:50

I just visited this forum for the first time since November last year, and I see that my ipw2100/2200 driver compiles from almost 2 years ago are still being used!
From < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....02;st=0 >

Quote

Changed kernel from 2.4.34.1 to 2.4.31 to gain user contributed modules, e.g., ipw2* and nvidia.

and Robert is even going to revert to the 2.4.31 kernel to be compatible! Wow.

Quote

Here I'm assuming Tempestous did actually compile this on a livecd boot of dsl-2.1b, and not on eg Woody or Slackware or RH9 with the same kernel or something.

I think I used Knoppix 3.4 as the build environment, with the DSL2.0-compatible kernel (k2.4.31) FULLY compiled.
I can say that compiling 3rd-party drivers usually requires a full kernel build in place. By "full" I don't just mean having the kernel source present, but you need to do the complete make bzImage / make modules process.

The ipw2100/ipw2200 drivers failed to compile under the old 2.4.26 kernel, but since they compile OK under 2.4.31, I would speculate that 2.4.34 should be OK. But I won't be doing it, my time is tied up with other projects/distributions.

Generally, though, modules for modern devices are being developed only for 2.6 kernels. And there is little evidence of these being backported to 2.4.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Sep. 07 2007,15:12

Yes, it does compile fine (however actual use is untested)
For those who were interested in a 2.4.34.1 kernel build, see < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....t=18910 >

Posted by WDef on Sep. 14 2007,15:41

Well, I dunno. Perhaps there's some difference between kernel versions in this regard.

I used full kernel sources (compiled all the way through, sucesfully used for several other modules that also require full kernel sources), correct .config, everything, and it would not compile on dsl with 2.4.26 or 2.4.31 for me. I also tried using knoppix3.4.

I even corresponded with the backports patch author, who no longer works on it.

You get to a point where these mysteries aren't worth it.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Nov. 02 2007,05:56

Took a look at this thread and the 2.4.34.1 one, and decided to try it out on 2.4.26, and now have a package of all the modules compiled.
If any of you are still interested, please contact me/reply here for testing/helping out.. or else I won't need to bother with the details then :P

Posted by infinitycircuit on Nov. 04 2007,20:26

Update: WPA does work with tempestuous's drivers for 2.4.31, contrary to what I said in thehatsrule's thread. The key is to invoke wpa_supplicant with the -Dipw tag instead of -Dwext. Unfortunately, the connection is somewhat sketchy--I get about 75% packet loss. However, it is still definetly usable as long as you avoid downloads that must be uninterruptible.

I also added a wiki entry to explain the process of using ipw2200--it's pretty sparse so feel free to edit it.