tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-07-13 22:33:03

Good evening,

(almost) as usual, the tiacx driver produces some hassle upon updating the kernel. I tried out the newest kernel and the acx module won't be loaded.

[chaosgeisterchen@celestary ~]$ pacman -Qs kernel26
local/kernel26 2.6.22-6
    The Linux Kernel and modules
[chaosgeisterchen@celestary ~]$ pacman -Qs tiacx
local/tiacx 20070101-4
    OpenSource module for Texas Instruments ACX100/ACX111 wireless chips. For stock arch 2.6 kernel

I tried out depmod -ae under root with the stock kernel and modprobe acx states, that the acx module is not found. It works flawlessly using kernel26ck, so it's clearly an issue with the newest kernel.

Maybe the driver has to be adapted to the new kernel release?

Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions

~cg

brain0 · 2007-07-14 00:42:49

It wouldn't build, so I put it on my imaginary "do it later" list.

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-07-15 09:45:10

If I asked you, would you suggest me to purchase another wifi-NIC, using a rather nonproblematic networking chip (just like the Ralink ones)?

I'm somehow getting tired from having problems with tiacx with every new release.

brain0 · 2007-07-15 13:37:35

It seems there may be improvement to the acx situation in the future, but I don't see any active development right now.

About now: there seems to be no new snapshot for the acx driver and I don't know if I can patch the old one to work again.

Mikko777 · 2007-07-15 18:05:39

Well I used to use tiacx on my lappy.

Now im using ndiswrapper to get wpa instead of wep and it works like charm with the "windows drivers"...

So t he question is, is there any reason to use the tiacx crappy driver?

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-07-15 18:28:47

[root@celestary chaosgeisterchen]# pacman -Rd tiacx tiacx-ck
(1/2) removing tiacx                                [############################################################################################################################################################] 100%
(2/2) removing tiacx-ck                             [############################################################################################################################################################] 100%

Best thing I did in a long time. The windows driver gives me 10-15% better radio reception and internet's now a lot faster. Thanks for mentioning ndiswrapper.

Mikko777 · 2007-07-15 19:18:06

chaosgeisterchen wrote:

[root@celestary chaosgeisterchen]# pacman -Rd tiacx tiacx-ck
(1/2) removing tiacx                                [############################################################################################################################################################] 100%
(2/2) removing tiacx-ck                             [############################################################################################################################################################] 100%

Best thing I did in a long time. The windows driver gives me 10-15% better radio reception and internet's now a lot faster. Thanks for mentioning ndiswrapper.

Np best thing I did too.

TheGrudge · 2007-08-04 20:46:00

Since I installed the 2.6.22 kernel ndiswrapper seems to crash my whole system.
When I use a normal cable connection, it seems to be stable but when I use WLAN after a while some LEDs on my laptop are blinking and nothing works anymore.
I'm using a U.S. Robotics USR5410 WLAN card with ndiswrapper 1.47... I also reinstalled the driver with

ndiswrapper -r usr11g

and

ndiswrapper -i <thefile.ini>

Last edited by TheGrudge (2007-08-04 20:50:28)

TheGrudge · 2007-08-05 12:46:14

I downgraded to kernel version 2.6.21 and ndiswrapper 1.43... seems to work again... so I guess I will stop upgrading the kernel and ndiswrapper for a while and buy a new card with a chipset that is supported by the kernel...

andrewsb · 2007-08-07 03:16:38

http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/Acx-mac80211

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-08-07 12:19:58

I tried it out and ended up getting three hardlocks in a row, with harddisk corruption and kernel panic after reboot included. Seems not to work so far.

chicha · 2007-08-07 21:13:01

Actually Gentoo people made a patch to make acx module work with kernel 2.6.22.
According to
http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page

You can find the patch here :
http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/Patch_2.6.22

I have tested it with tiacx package in unstable repository.
It works very well.

As many of you I have problems making my acx111 based wifi card (Netgear WG311 V2) work properly.

I have tried ndiswrapper, specially because it supports WPA. Ndiswrapper is not as stable as acx module is in my opinion.
Depending on the kernel version I have to change the windows driver used if I want a stable connexion.
Recently I experienced kernel freeze when downloading a lot of torrent files using deluge.
Morever the WPA support is not stable (does it come from the windows driver ? my card ?) : the link is cut after a few minutes.

I reverted back to acx module with the kernel-2.6.22 patch and I do not encounter problems anymore.
Morever the acx module supports monitor mode which is not the case of ndiswrapper.

It seems acx project is more active since kernel-2.6.22 changes. They are trying to implement the new 802.11 stack.
The new driver will implement WPA.

If you really need WPA then use ndiswrapper. Else I recommand acx module. Be patient, WPA support will come one day !

We have 2 lessons here :

1- Always check whether a hardware is fully supported by Linux before buying it. Netgear got me on this product and I will think twice before buying Netgear stuffs next time !

2- Thank you so much to the Linux community for their work on 'old' hardware. Which company will care about the acx111 controler ? The Windows driver has not been updated since 3 years now.

Iphitus : if you see this post and do not want to manage the patch and the package anymore contact me. I will be pleased to manage it through AUR

For those who cannot wait for a new release, a PKGBUILD and the patch are available here :
http://cdadhemar.free.fr/arch/tiacx.tar
Use at your own risk

I hope it helped !
Cheers,

Chicha

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-08-08 12:18:09

Thanks for the PKGBUILD, but it does not seem to work right here - I modified it for -ck and it did not work either. I will wait for the next tiacx-package-revision.

Last edited by chaosgeisterchen (2007-08-08 12:18:42)

chicha · 2007-08-08 12:37:46

What kind of problem did you encountered ?
Can you please provide the error message you get ?

Thank you

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-08-08 14:17:12

I get this error message

[root@celestary chaosgeisterchen]# modprobe acx
FATAL: Error inserting acx (/lib/modules/2.6.22-ck/extra/acx.ko): Invalid module format

using this PKGBUILD

_kernver=2.6.22-ck;


pkgname=tiacx-ck
pkgver=20070101
pkgrel=4
pkgdesc="OpenSource module for Texas Instruments ACX100/ACX111 wireless chips. For kernel26ck."
arch=(i686 x86_64)
url="http://acx100.sourceforge.net/"
license=('GPL2' 'as-is')
depends=('wireless_tools' 'kernel26ck' 'tiacx-firmware')
install=acx.install
source=("http://www.cmartin.tk/acx/acx-$pkgver.tar.bz2"
                "kernel-2.6.22.patch")
md5sums=('ec6322b9c82781897a9433ef0cefda6f'
         'e22910ae77c4754ebc27397b01252c54')

build() {
    cd $startdir/src/acx-20070101
    patch -p0 -i ../kernel-2.6.22.patch || return 1
    make -C /lib/modules/$_kernver/build M=`pwd`
    install -D acx.ko $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/$_kernver/extra/acx.ko
    sed -i -e "s/KERNEL_VERSION='.*'/KERNEL_VERSION='${_kernver}'/" $startdir/*.install
}

Kernel 2.6.22-ck in use.

With stock kernel and the PKGBUILD you provided, I get the error message, that the module acx was apparently not found.

Last edited by chaosgeisterchen (2007-08-08 14:47:41)

chicha · 2007-08-08 14:36:49

This patch as not been made for kernel-ck.
I do not use this kernel and thus I cannot give you support on it, sorry

About stock kernel :
It seems you do not have any problem building the package, I am glade about this.
I forgot to update the kernel version in the install script provided with the package
I will update it tonight.
Until then you can do

depmod -v '2.6.22-ARCH' > /dev/null 2>&1

After installing the tiacx package and then modprobe the module.

Last edited by chicha (2007-08-08 14:37:07)

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-08-08 14:48:17

// PROBLEM SOLVED

It works now. I had to change the acx.install-file as well, as I now understand. It works properly with kernel26ck, PKGBUILD adapted.

acx.install

# arg 1:  the new package version
post_install() {
  KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.22-ck'
  depmod -v $KERNEL_VERSION > /dev/null 2>&1 
}

# arg 1:  the new package version
# arg 2:  the old package version
post_upgrade() {
  KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.22-ck'
  depmod -v $KERNEL_VERSION > /dev/null 2>&1     
  
}

# arg 1:  the old package version
post_remove() {
  KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.22-ck'
  depmod -v $KERNEL_VERSION > /dev/null 2>&1     
}

op=$1
shift
$op $*

PKGBUILD

# Maintainer: Tom Killian
# Temporary fix for kernel-2.6.22 using Gentoo's patch
# by Charles-Henri d'Adhemar <cdadhemar@gmail.com>
# Adapted for using it with kernel26ck
_kernver=2.6.22-ck;


pkgname=tiacx-ck
pkgver=20070101
pkgrel=4
pkgdesc="OpenSource module for Texas Instruments ACX100/ACX111 wireless chips. For kernel26ck"
arch=(i686 x86_64)
url="http://acx100.sourceforge.net/"
license=('GPL2' 'as-is')
depends=('wireless_tools' 'kernel26ck' 'tiacx-firmware')
install=acx.install
source=("http://lisas.de/~andi/acx100/acx-$pkgver.tar.bz2"
        "kernel-2.6.22.patch")
md5sums=('ec6322b9c82781897a9433ef0cefda6f'
         'e22910ae77c4754ebc27397b01252c54')

build() {
    cd $startdir/src/acx-20070101
    patch -p0 -i ../kernel-2.6.22.patch || return 1
    make -C /lib/modules/$_kernver/build M=`pwd`
    install -D acx.ko $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/$_kernver/extra/acx.ko
    sed -i -e "s/KERNEL_VERSION='.*'/KERNEL_VERSION='${_kernver}'/" $startdir/*.install
}

Hopefully useful for some people out there..

Thanks for the support, chicha!

chicha · 2007-08-08 14:56:41

Glad it helped !
Thank you chaosgeisterchen too

tomk · 2007-08-23 08:49:23

Updated tiacx packages for all kernels are now in [unstable].

Thanks to chicha here and XazZ on IRC for locating the patch.

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-10-13 12:46:56

Once again. Is anyone able to get tiacx to work with 2.6.23? I would be grateful if you devs could get it to work someday soon.

XazZ · 2007-10-13 13:08:48

chaosgeisterchen wrote:

Once again. Is anyone able to get tiacx to work with 2.6.23? I would be grateful if you devs could get it to work someday soon.

Hi..
I couldn't test it with my card yet - but the driver compiled fine here
Do you get any error messages (from dmesg)
Oh, and you can't use the package from unstable because it's compiled for 2.6.22-ARCH (just use ABS to rebuild it - remember to change the kernver in the PKGBUILD and in the install-script)

XazZ

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-10-13 14:13:31

// EDIT

Read the ABS wiki page and started working on it. It compiled fine and is now working again. Thanks for the hint.

Last edited by chaosgeisterchen (2007-10-13 14:40:17)

XazZ · 2007-10-13 19:12:07

I just checked the tiacx-site and saw that they've release a new driver a few days ago (check their post http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=741488)
They've also released a new mac80211 driver

Here's the PKGBUILD and the install-file for kernel 2.6.23-ARCH for the mac80211-driver!
WPA should work with this - but I had no time to test it yet (nor I could test the package yet - I just assume that it's working)
PKGBUILD:

_kernver=2.6.23-ARCH;

pkgname=tiacx
pkgver=20071003
pkgrel=4
pkgdesc="OpenSource module for Texas Instruments ACX100/ACX111 wireless chips."
arch=(i686 x86_64)
url="http://acx100.sourceforge.net/"
depends=('wireless_tools')
install=acx.install
md5sums=('dff7b396299001724e522d3ccf79c883')
sha1sums=('5e62f70cd84c6c0ecb78358585e7e44901d2ce30')
source=(http://downloads.sourceforge.net/acx100/acx-mac80211-$pkgver.tar.bz2)

build() {
    cd $startdir/src/acx-mac80211-$pkgver
    sed -i "s|//#define CONFIG_ACX_MAC80211_PCI 1|#define CONFIG_ACX_MAC80211_PCI 1|g" acx_config.h
    sed -i "s|//#define CONFIG_ACX_MAC80211_USB 1|#define CONFIG_ACX_MAC80211_USB 1|g" acx_config.h
    make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd` CONFIG_ACX_MAC80211=m CONFIG_ACX_MAC80211_PCI=y CONFIG_ACX_MAC80211_USB=y
    install -D acx-mac80211.ko $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/$_kernver/extra/acx-mac80211.ko
    sed -i -e "s/KERNEL_VERSION='.*'/KERNEL_VERSION='${_kernver}'/" $startdir/*.install
}

acx.install

# arg 1:  the new package version
post_install() {
  KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.23-ARCH'
  echo "WARNING: module name changed"
  echo "the new module-name is acx-mac80211"
  depmod -v $KERNEL_VERSION > /dev/null 2>&1 
}

# arg 1:  the new package version
# arg 2:  the old package version
post_upgrade() {
  KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.23-ARCH'
  depmod -v $KERNEL_VERSION > /dev/null 2>&1     
  
}

# arg 1:  the old package version
post_remove() {
  KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.23-ARCH'
  depmod -v $KERNEL_VERSION > /dev/null 2>&1     
}

op=$1
shift
$op $*

As soon as kernel26 2.6.23* will be moved into base I'll file a feature-request on the bugtracker
Oh, and as you've already seen - the new driver don't needs any patches (works on 2.6.23 'out of the box')

Enjoy
XazZ

tomk · 2007-10-13 22:15:24

Nice, XazZ - if you can confirm that it's working, I'll put it in unstable, along with the old-style one. Obviously, they can't both have the same name, so I'll follow their example and call the new one acx-mac80211.

byte · 2007-10-14 01:16:48

NOT WANT!

;-)

Comp locks up with the new stack driver, better use the normal one. Seems like you don't even need the patch anymore.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-07-13 22:33:03

tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#2 2007-07-14 00:42:49

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#3 2007-07-15 09:45:10

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#4 2007-07-15 13:37:35

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#5 2007-07-15 18:05:39

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#6 2007-07-15 18:28:47

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#7 2007-07-15 19:18:06

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#8 2007-08-04 20:46:00

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#9 2007-08-05 12:46:14

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#10 2007-08-07 03:16:38

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#11 2007-08-07 12:19:58

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#12 2007-08-07 21:13:01

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#13 2007-08-08 12:18:09

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#14 2007-08-08 12:37:46

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#15 2007-08-08 14:17:12

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#16 2007-08-08 14:36:49

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#17 2007-08-08 14:48:17

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#18 2007-08-08 14:56:41

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#19 2007-08-23 08:49:23

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#20 2007-10-13 12:46:56

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#21 2007-10-13 13:08:48

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#22 2007-10-13 14:13:31

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#23 2007-10-13 19:12:07

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#24 2007-10-13 22:15:24

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

#25 2007-10-14 01:16:48

Re: tiacx not working with Kernel 2.6.22

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