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#1 2017-11-01 11:38:28

kox
Member
Registered: 2015-05-01
Posts: 144

What to do when you can't upgrade because of obsolete wifi drivers

Hello. I have been using rt3290sta wifi drivers from aur. Until on one kernel release they stopped working, which forced me to downgrade the kernel.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/rt3290sta-dkms/ and my last comment:

kox commented on 2017-10-12 07:55
Worked fine until last kernel update. Now it doesn't build anymore with dkms autoinstall.

Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 4.13.5-1-ARCH (x86_64)

Now in the make.log there's error like this:

./include/linux/string.h:305:4: error: call to ‘__read_overflow2’ declared with attribute error: detected read beyond size of object passed as 2nd parameter

Edit: I downgraded to 4.12.13-1 and it works again.

So I downgraded the kernel to the one I had previously and that's how I roll since then. Now I'd like to upgrade the system. So should I upgrade everything but the kernel?

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#2 2017-11-01 11:41:07

Trilby
Inspector Parrot
Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,442
Website

Re: What to do when you can't upgrade because of obsolete wifi drivers

kox wrote:

So should I upgrade everything but the kernel?

This is not a good long term strategy, but in the short term, sure.  The kernel package is one of very few that it is safe to hold back while updating (almost) everything else.  There may be exceptions with some video drivers or similar, but this is rare.

As a slightly better alternative, you may want to try the linux-lts package.

For the long term, you may want to look for alternative wireless drivers.

Last edited by Trilby (2017-11-01 11:41:41)


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#3 2017-11-01 11:51:18

kox
Member
Registered: 2015-05-01
Posts: 144

Re: What to do when you can't upgrade because of obsolete wifi drivers

Thanks, I didn't know there was an lts release. I don't know about the drivers though, if there are alternatives. Perhaps I could try to fix the issue with that driver, but I don't have time at all for that. I hope this short term fix will last until I get a new computer in a few months. Actually I have a problem with h264 screen capture, the recordings play fine on the desktop, but don't work on mobile browsers (broken picture). And I have been wondering whether it has to do something with the old kenel. But I will just update everything first and see if it will work.

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#4 2017-11-01 14:16:15

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,192

Re: What to do when you can't upgrade because of obsolete wifi drivers

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#5 2017-11-01 20:18:19

kox
Member
Registered: 2015-05-01
Posts: 144

Re: What to do when you can't upgrade because of obsolete wifi drivers

Thank you! I made the change and it compiles now. Is there a way I could push the update to aur?

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#6 2017-11-03 20:24:51

eschwartz
Fellow
Registered: 2014-08-08
Posts: 4,097

Re: What to do when you can't upgrade because of obsolete wifi drivers

You'd have to ask the maintainer in the comments.

(If the maintainer doesn't fix it soon, you can try submitting an orphan request to become the new maintainer -- it hasn't been updated in quite some time, so the maintainer might not necessarily still be paying attention to this package.)


Managing AUR repos The Right Way -- aurpublish (now a standalone tool)

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#7 2017-11-03 21:05:53

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,192

Re: What to do when you can't upgrade because of obsolete wifi drivers

@Eschwartz the aur PKGBUILD uses

license=('GPL')

yet https://launchpad.net/~barracuda72/+arc … pa1.tar.gz and what appears to be the original upstream release
http://cdn-cw.mediatek.com/Downloads/li … 18.tar.bz2 does not contain any reference to the GPL that I could see while looking at the issue.
Every file I examined was marked

/****************************************************************************
 * Ralink Tech Inc.
 * 4F, No. 2 Technology 5th Rd.
 * Science-based Industrial Park
 * Hsin-chu, Taiwan, R.O.C.
 * (c) Copyright 2002, Ralink Technology, Inc.
 *
 * All rights reserved. Ralink's source code is an unpublished work and the
 * use of a copyright notice does not imply otherwise. This source code
 * contains confidential trade secret material of Ralink Tech. Any attemp
 * or participation in deciphering, decoding, reverse engineering or in any
 * way altering the source code is stricitly prohibited, unless the prior
 * written consent of Ralink Technology, Inc. is obtained.
 ****************************************************************************

Which is why I only referenced someone else who had patched the issue to comply with the requirement to not alter the source.

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