2MBit wlan and linux drivers

[David Gibson]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 05:09:29PM +0100, Daniel Winkler wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have got problems with our 2MBit wavelan here. The infrastructure:
> 
> - ELSA LanCom L-2 (2 MBit, Z-Com-wavelan card, cheap ;-), connected by
> Ethernet to an old Linux box (DHCP, Router, etc.)
> - ELSA AirLancer 11 (alias Orinoco), AirLancer 2 (Z-Com, same as build-in
> the access point)
> - Windows and Linux (SuSE Linux 7.3, Kernel 2.4.10, but same on other Linux
> dist.)
> 
> I do not have any problems under Windows. But my cards do not work under
> Linux at all.
> 
> The situation:
> I insert the card and start the PCMCIA services. No problems. But as soon as
> I restart the DHCP client to fetch an IP my system locks within 10 sec.
> Totally. (10 secondes, sometimes sooner, sometimes later..) No
> keyboard

Ouch.  I assume this is on the machine with the AirLancer 11 - I don't
know anything about the 2Mb cards, or the state of their drivers.

> events are accepted, the Caps Lock LED is on and sometimes the system even
> reboots itsself. Without starting the DHCP service, iwconfig shows the right
> data, (Network, signal strength etc.), the driver is loaded without
> any

Be aware that the information iwconfig gives will be misleading if the
interface is down at the time.

> errors, but as soon as I get an IP (yes, my PC gets an IP, but thats all..)
> the system locks. Console 10 tells me:

That's doubly weird, ok.

> "Oops: 0000
> ...
> Code ...
>  <0>Kernel panic: Aiee, killing interrut handler!
> In interrupt handler - not syncing"

What would be really useful is an actual capture of the Oops message.
However that's going to be tricky since you're getting a complete
hang.  As a first step could you try grabiing the latest driver
(0.09a) from http://www.ozlabs.org/people/dgibson/dldwd and seeing if
it has the same symptoms (I expect it will).

Are you using the "Linus" in-kernel PCMCIA modules, or those from the
David Hinds pcmcia-cs package?

-- 
David Gibson			| For every complex problem there is a
david at gibson.dropbear.id.au	| solution which is simple, neat and
				| wrong.  -- H.L. Mencken
http://www.ozlabs.org/people/dgibson