ndiswrapper on P4 machine /w hyperthreading [solved]

mathgeek · Last edited by mathgeek on Mon May 08, 2006 8:26 am; edited 1 time in total

Hi!

I have a P4 notebook which supports hyperthreading. Thus, I compiled a 2.6.16-vanilla kernel with the proper support for that. I did not have SMP in my kernel before, so when I wanted to access my network with my Netgear WG111-v2 using ndiswrapper, the whole system freezes completely. No ssh, no console, just no options left except to switch the whole thing off.

Since I could not find any other linux driver for that thing that actually supports WPA, I think about switching SMP off again. But at what cost? How much does SMP really help in this case? I'm using this notebook for scientific work, so I need most of the perfomance it offers. But if the effects of turing SMP off again would be barely noticable, I would consider a 'downgrade' for the moment. Please share some experience!

Thanx
mathggek
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TheRAt · Veteran Joined: 03 Jun 2002 Posts: 1580

did you re-emerge ndiswrapper after compiling in your new kernel ?
what version of ndiswrapper?
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mathgeek · Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 10:12 am Post subject:

Sure did. I could not have loaded the modules at all afterwards.
I'm not quite sure about the version I was using then, but I think it was 1.13 or slightly older (latest version available roughly three weeks ago).
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JeliJami · Veteran Joined: 17 Jan 2006 Posts: 1086 Location: Belgium

after reboot, can you find any error messages in /var/log/messages?
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mathgeek · Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 2:38 pm Post subject:

That is the most interesting thing. There is no indication whatsoever that something goes south but all of a sudden the whole thing just freezes. And since it freezes completely there is no trace in any logfile of what might have caused the problem.
Is it problematic to load the ndiswrapper module on startup, even if the network card is not yet needed? I could easily try to load it manually when the system is up and running. I experienced that it dies instantly when I plug in the card while my window manager ist starting. But it dies some minutes later if I wait for it to start so I guess there is no correlation that helps.
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mathgeek · Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 12:10 pm Post subject:

OK, now I have removed ndiswrapper from the list auf automatically loaded modules. This does not help either. I can load the module manually, start the device and I can also start wpa_supplicant. But then again...
I might try a different kernel.
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mathgeek · Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 8:26 am Post subject:

Hi,

I found some sort of solution. The whole thing works a lot better with a 6.6.17-rc2 kernel (vanilla). I used my wireless connection with wpa for an entire evenig with no problems at all. Fascinating...

Thank you for all your comments!
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