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rtl8180 woes

Started by GUEST_Possibly_sundevil_*** , Aug 26 2003 03:28 PM

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#1 GUEST_Possibly_sundevil_***

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Posted 26 August 2003 - 03:28 PM

hey.
i'm a somewhat experienced (not a total n00b) user.
i can get my way around.....

:help:

i picked up a $20 wireless nic based on the realtek 8180 chipset.
i'm having a helluva time getting the running.

i was running redhat 9, but am now running mandrake 9.1
i'm on a sony vaio laptop
p3 650 with 128 megs of ram

if someone can lend me some advice.....

i've recompiled the driver with for my kernel and have insmod'd it.
but i can't get the dang thing to light up and connect!

i know i'm being a little vague right now, but i don't wanna run through the whole narrative of my experiences with this card unless someone thinks they can help.

i've done a lot of reading on the various boards and discovered that getting this card to work under linux is bitch, but it is doable.

works fine under xp....but i'd rather not go there :blink:

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#2 threeway

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Posted 26 August 2003 - 03:32 PM

I myself have a card that is similar, Realtek Rtl8180 , is what cardctl info states it is. Branded, its an Edimax EW7106P, with Linux drivers that *should* work, however, I have yet to get any to work. I hate the fact that all these companies claim linux support, and then when you get the drivers, they are all redhat. RedHat may be a distrobution of linux, but it ISN'T linux itself. Please companies, help us out here.

Also, I will never ever buy from a company which the hardware doesn't have support any more. I am sick of being stuck in windows just to use some new fangled device that looks cool, but in reality just plain sucks.

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#3 sundevil

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Posted 26 August 2003 - 04:22 PM

mycard ctgl reports
Socket 1:
product info: "Realtek", "Rtl8180"
manfid: 0x0000, 0x024c
function: 6 (network)

realtek supplies redhat and suse drivers.
i tried running redhat 9 and got nowhere
i switched over to mandrake and recompiled the driver.
that worked fine.
also insmod -f reported no errors.....
but now what?

i still need to config the card and get it running.
but nothin seems to work.

its very frustrating!

thankfully i have a land-lan-line (say that 10times fast) that works under linux so i can post this w/o booting into winblows.

but that doesn't do me much good

:help:

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#4 threeway

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Posted 26 August 2003 - 05:19 PM

Well, you are lucky, I got em to compile, but they would never actually work with the card. Now you use iwconfig to set it up. If you don't have the iwconfig program, use MDK's package management tool to install the wireless-tools package. Or get it off the web, in source form and install it that way.

To actually connect, you would use something like this...

iwconfig ethX(or wifiX or wlanX) option setting.

e.g.
iwconfig eth1 channel 3

Also, the last setting you should make is setting the essid. Once you set the essid, it "goes live"
and then you ifconfig eth1 up

but in order to set it up, the device must not be up.

What kernel are you running?

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#5 sundevil

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Posted 26 August 2003 - 05:37 PM

2.4.21-0.13mdk

it took me a while... but ....
download the redhat9 drivers (as they use gcc3) and recompile it after adding the kernel to the makefile.
it should compile and give you the driver.
then /sbin/insmod -f should do it.

now to try yer suggestion.

maybe between the 2 of us,we'll figure this damn thing out

:unsure:

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#6 threeway

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Posted 26 August 2003 - 05:40 PM

where do i find the rh9 drivers?

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#7 sundevil

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Posted 26 August 2003 - 05:53 PM

http://www.realtek.c...amodel=RTL8180L

question for you.....
where is iwconifg in mandrake?
i tried installing the package.....it says i already have it.
but i can't find it.

???

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#8 sundevil

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Posted 26 August 2003 - 07:18 PM

i tried installed wireless_tools rpm and i get message that everything is installed.

but when i ls /usr/local/sbin the directory is empty.

what the hell?

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#9 sundevil

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Posted 26 August 2003 - 10:17 PM

arghhh

so i finally got wireless_tools to install and ran iwconfig.
here's what i got:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled with version 0
of Wireless Extension, while this program is using version 15.
Some things may be broken...

wlan0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:off/any Nickname:""
NWID:off/any Frequency:infGHz Access Point: FF:BF:21:00:00:00
Bit Rate=-1.07375e+06kb/s Tx-Power=-1073745692 dBm Sensitivity=1162167625/0
Retry:on RTS thr=-1073745692 B Fragment thr=-1073745692 B
Power Management-1.07375e+06kb/s:on

some things may be broken?
no shit!
:wacko:

how do fix it????

any ideas?

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#10 threeway

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Posted 27 August 2003 - 06:43 PM

I don't remember exactly what that means. You might need to recompile the driver, but, if it somewhat works, then why fix it?

No, seriously, I am not too sure, let me ask around. I tried those drivers, but I shall try them again. On a side note, got my cisco 350 working with kismet finally (updated to firmware 4.25.30) and using the sources from the 2.4.19 kernel in the pcmcia-cs package, which is quite fun to do in gentoo, manually modifying packages as you emerge them.

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#11 sundevil

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Posted 27 August 2003 - 08:18 PM

thanks for asking around.....

this thing is driving me batty.

i messed with it all day. the driver compiles, i can force load it ...
but nothin beyond that.
the card doesn't light up or anything.
lsmod says the driver is loaded.
...

idunno

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#12 sundevil

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Posted 27 August 2003 - 09:13 PM

progress?

i recompiled the driver (hoping some kind of voodoo would kick and fix things)
insmod-ed it
and ran the wlanup script that came with the drivers....
the card lit up!!!!
woo hoo

then, before i can do anything....
kernel panic!
:grr:

here's the wlanup script

#Load module
/sbin/insmod -f rtl8180_24x.o
/sbin/iwpriv wlan0 enable
/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 172.20.14.180
echo "$(/sbin/ifconfig wlan0)"

not sure what caused the crash.
the driver?
:wacko:

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#13 threeway

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Posted 27 August 2003 - 10:11 PM

Sounds like it - and I am not going to make any progress personally, as my friend got a new laptop today (still trying to convince him to let me slap linux on it heh) and he needed a wlan card, so i gave that to him since he's being a windows slappy

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#14 sundevil

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Posted 27 August 2003 - 10:24 PM

oh well.
thanx for letting me gripe.

perhaps i'll cave and buy a name brnad card with real support

i just hate not being able to do something that 'should' work

i'll probably keep fighting it
:ninja:

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#15 threeway

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Posted 27 August 2003 - 10:35 PM

I'd say keep fighting it - don't give up... hehe

You know you are close, not sure what is causing the kernel panic, have you tried checking the log? or what the KP says when it happens?

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#16 GUEST_prototypo_***

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Posted 03 September 2003 - 03:56 PM

I have a Netgear 802.11b card that includes the RTL8180 chipset. I run Debian unstable.

When I ran 2.4.40, I could use the pre-compiled rtl8180_24x.o with no problem. The moment that I upgraded to 2.4.21 it stopped working. Interestingly, it will insmod but is not reachable after that.

A recompile gave me the same error reported here: No problem insmod'ing, but no luck accessing. I did *not* get a kernel panic, though.

Hope this helps someone!

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#17 GUEST_Fabius_***

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Posted 06 September 2003 - 04:28 AM

Well I had the same problems. The RTL8180 drivers is in a kind alpha stadium, it's terribly unstable. The main problem I think is the pre-compiled module, it seems to cause the problems whenn you are trying to compile it for an other kernel than which it was compiled for (and that's Red Hat's Standard Kernel 2.4.18-3). The next problem with the drivers is that it's not supporting the standard wireless LAN extensions of Linux. That's why you only get garbage when you're trying to get any status via iwconfig or iwpriv or something like that. The only way to configure it is via some private wireless extensions provided by the driver. I hope Realtek is working on this problems...
However, I've got the best experiences (in stability) with that card under linux-2.4.21-pre3. What you have to do:

1) download linux-2.4.20 sources (e. g. from here: www.at.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux-2.4.20.tar.bz2)
2) download the linux-2.4.21-pre3 patch (e. g. from here: kernel.atnet.at/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/testing/old/patch-2.4.21-pre3.bz2)
3) patch the kernel, configure and compile it
4) use the SuSE 8.2 driver from Realtek and compile it with that kernel (don't forget to edit the Makefile to point to the right kernel directory)
attention: it can be that the driver reports an error during compile (something like that timer_t is already declared). To fix that open the rtl8180_type.h and comment the line out where the error was reported (with "//")
5) edit the wlanup and wlandown scripts provided with the driver

That should it be...

if you have further questions or need help you can contact me under fabius@webmasters.co.at

greetings,
Fabius

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#18 GUEST_eagle_***

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Posted 08 September 2003 - 05:50 AM

I just bought a cheap bundle from acer with a lanrouter and a pcmcia-card.

It's just mysterious what I found while trying to get it work.

I took the drivers from realtek (2003-09-04) for the gcc3.2.2 and compiled it as described in the readme. (On Gentoo with 2.4.20-gentoo-r1)
After "iwpriv wlan0 enable" I got it work, but with about 75% Packet loss. My dmesg repeated a message like

RTL8180: Roaming...
RTL8180: Select a BSS and Join it at channel 6.
RTL8180: wlan_sta_tbl_add return false!
RTL8180: ----------------------------------------------------------
RTL8180: wlan0 Link status:
RTL8180: Channel number = 6
RTL8180: beacon period = 100
RTL8180: BSSID = 0x00:0x02:0x72:0x03:0x2e:0x63
RTL8180: SSID = local
RTL8180: Capability = 0x11
RTL8180: AID = 0x01
RTL8180: Operational rate = 0x0F <bit 0~3 = 1~11 Mbps>
RTL8180: ----------------------------------------------------------

in almost the same interval as my router's traf-LED is lights up.
for me the wlan_sta_tbl_add function seems to have a prob to log in the right BSS.
But why? I tried to change some values with iwpriv to set the channel etc. but there's always the dmesg-answer:
RTL8180: Use RTL private command [channel]

My english is not that good, but I thought that the driver tells me to USE the private command, but what's wrong with "iwpriv wlan0 wlan_para channel=6" ??? :huh:

And why is there no way to view the things I've configured ?

Das anyone know if the support becomes better the next weeks?

Eagle

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#19 GUEST_russell bell_***

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Posted 13 September 2003 - 10:39 PM

I just received my generic wireless card that uses this chipset. I thought it had the ADMTek chipset instead. I can't get the card to work in Linux. It can't get the BSSID correct. The BSSID should be the address of the router but it gets some random number (different every time) and it won't let one set it as an argument.

That 'Use RTL private command' message tells you that you are using that command. It tells you you have done something that works. This took me a while to figure out but I could see the results when I enabled the card.

It has no public configuration, for which reason iwconfig does not work. One must use iwpriv for all purposes.

One must also set the ssid, for example:

iwpriv wlan0 ssid=MyHomeNetwork

the docs nor the help screen tell one this.