[SOLVED] Realtek problem: 8180/

[DubJohn]

Hi,

When I try to bring up my wi-fi PCI card (ifup wlan0 or ifconfig wlan0 up) my whole PC just hangs until I power it off.

I believe I have the right drivers, but cannot see what I am doing wrong.

I'd really prefer not to go down the ndiswrapper route.

Firstly, I can see the PCI card and the driver it is using :

[J@gx260-f10 ~]$ lspci -k
...
...
01:08.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)
	Kernel driver in use: rtl8180
	Kernel modules: rtl8180
01:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)
	Kernel driver in use: e1000
	Kernel modules: e1000

I can also see wlan0 :

[J@gx260-f10 ~]$ iwconfig 
lo        no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:""  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=0 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B   
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

eth0      no wireless extensions.

pan0      no wireless extensions.

The card is using the rtl8180 driver, which is loaded :

J@gx260-f10 ~]$ lsmod
...
...
rtl8180                30080  0 
mac80211              174052  1 rtl8180
eeprom_93cx6            5888  1 rtl8180
cfg80211               24072  2 rtl8180,mac80211
...

[J@gx260-f10 ~]$ modprobe -all | grep rtl
/lib/modules/2.6.27.21-170.2.56.fc10.i686/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtl8187.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.27.21-170.2.56.fc10.i686/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtl8180.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.27.21-170.2.56.fc10.i686/kernel/drivers/net/usb/rtl8150.ko
[J@gx260-f10 ~]$

The driver appears to be the correct one (see description):

[J@gx260-f10 ~]$ modinfo rtl8180
filename:       /lib/modules/2.6.27.21-170.2.56.fc10.i686/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtl8180.ko
license:        GPL
description:    RTL8180 / RTL8185 PCI wireless driver
author:         Andrea Merello <andreamrl@tiscali.it>
author:         Michael Wu <flamingice@sourmilk.net>
srcversion:     E04F8115B59D322E6E31BBE
alias:          pci:v00001186d00003300sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v00001799d00006020sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v00001799d00006001sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v000010ECd00008180sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v00001799d0000701Fsv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v00001799d0000700Fsv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v000010ECd00008185sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
depends:        mac80211,eeprom_93cx6,cfg80211
vermagic:       2.6.27.21-170.2.56.fc10.i686 SMP mod_unload 686 4KSTACKS

So everything seems correct. But when I try to bring up the card by
ifconfig wlan0 up
or
ifup wlan0
the PC just hangs for ever. No mouse movement, ctrl-alt-del, nothing.

I have downloaded a Linux driver from Realtek but it will not compile. I have the latest kernel-devel, headers, and gcc. I can post compiler errors if anybody would like. They're all apparently to do with missing parameters.

Has anybody got any ideas of what I could try next?

[scottro]

I'm afraid I can't help with that particular card, but I've edited the thread title, making it more likely that someone who knows about it will see the post.

(It's always very good to put the card model in the thread--there's a lot of cards and busy people tend to ignore threads that just mention wireless.)

[DubJohn]

bump bump bump

[scottro]

Well, it seems to be a reported bug. I found this in about 30 seconds putting rtl8180 hangs linux
into google.


https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=501109

It's always best, if no one seems to be answering to describe some of the steps you've taken, even they turn out to be false starts.

Googling indicates most of the problems with this card are relatively old.

You might try manually connecting with it, to see if the problem is NetworkManager. I have a page detailing one way to do that at http://home.roadrunner.com/~computer.../wireless.html

[DubJohn]

Hi Scottro,

Thanks for the info.

The bug you mentioned (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=501109) was only recently reported so I hadn't noticed it before. It does look like my problem but I am not even getting to bring the card up at all (ifconfig wlan0 up = crash).

In the meantime I have downloaded open source drivers from http://sourceforge.net/projects/rtl-wifi/, but cannot get them to compile in my kernel (2.6.27).

I have also tried a patch a guy has made available through the open source forum at http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.p...orum_id=652149. This will not compile on my kernel either. (I have the latest headers and devel).

The compile errors all seem to be around missing or incompatible parameters, so I might have a look at the headers and try to patch it myself.

I have seen some reports around of people getting these cards to work in various distros so it really should be possible, but I'm close to throwing my hat at it and trying another card at this stage!

[scottro]

Sometimes, that's the best thing to do, for awhile. I have a machine with the AR5007EG, which is trivial now, but was a real pain for awhile. I wound up purchasing a USB stick that I used till a good MadWifi snapshot came out. This was a few years ago.

[DubJohn]

Just in case anybody comes across this problem, Realtek have since published driver modules that fix the problem with the 8185 chipset. No more ndiswrapper for me.

http://www.realtek.com/downloads/