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synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

[hardware problem] Swapping Mini-PCI cards + madwifi = unstable

I have a Dell Letitude XT (tablet), model number PP12S.  It came stock with a Broadcom 4312-based wireless card, which was a nightmare for drivers.  broadcom-wl was okay, but it was lacking so many features, while b43 with b43-firmware dropped a network connection all the time.  Gross.  So I got a little curious and swapped it out for an Atheros AR5BXB63 card from a Toshiba laptop, which works!  It's recognized as an AR5001 by the kernel with the ID of 168c:001c.  Naturally, I sprang right for my beloved madwifi drivers, which are working great!  I even got the tablet's wireless LED to flicker on activity = awesome.

But I have a major problem ... all this swapperoo stuff has rendered my tablet pretty unstable.  Out of nowhere, usually after 30 minutes, sometimes more, the system completely locks.  I don't see any flashing keyboard LEDs, which don't really indicate that it's a software problem, but I only started noticing this behavior after using the madwifi drivers (from svn and from the repos).  I have also updated the system BIOS to the latest revision, A09.

So what I'm trying to ask is: are there any compile-time flags or configuration settings I could try enabling/disabling to make the drivers a little more conservative?  /var/log/* doesn't seem to show anything after the locks, so is there something I could do to make the logging better?  What would you do from here?

Last edited by synthead (2010-11-01 02:14:48)

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: [hardware problem] Swapping Mini-PCI cards + madwifi = unstable

Try ath5k (official in-kernel driver) instead of madwifi (external almost-obsolete driver with binary blob).

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: [hardware problem] Swapping Mini-PCI cards + madwifi = unstable

I've used the ath5k driver before, but madwifi seems to have a lot better compatibility with aircrack and the ability to manipulate virtual interfaces.  There's that really annoying "-1 channel" bug assoctated with the ath5k driver now too

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: [hardware problem] Swapping Mini-PCI cards + madwifi = unstable

You know what?  All that compat-wireless stuff I tried working with renamed a bunch of modules in /lib/modules in an effort to blacklist them.  I uninstalled "kernel26" and inspected the folder for "leftover" files, removed the appropriate ones, and reinstalled "kernel26".  I also upgraded my kernel to 2.6.35.8-1 in the process.  I've been going on a few hours now!  I'm keeping my fingers crossed ...

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: [hardware problem] Swapping Mini-PCI cards + madwifi = unstable

Gross, even with the ath5k driver, it seizes randomly.  I'm just going to assume that this is something proprietary with the Dell hardware.  Since I don't see anything in the logs and there are no signs of kernel panics, I find it very unlikely that any software changes will fix it.  Back to broadcom ...