[PLUG] RealTek 8180 driver seg faults...

[Carla Schroder]

On Friday 18 February 2005 12:25 pm, robinsom at robinson-west.com wrote:
> Feb 18 13:28:04 condor kernel: 
> Feb 18 13:28:04 condor kernel: 
> Feb 18 13:28:04 condor kernel: ******** RTL8180 Wireless Lan Driver 
2003-11-24 loaded********
> Feb 18 13:28:04 condor kernel: PCI: Assigned IRQ 5 for device 00:0a.0

Are you sure this is right driver for your wireless adapter?
Do you know what your chipset is?
RTL8180 chipsets don't work well in Linux. Part of the driver is a closed 
binary, and even on Windows RealTek tend to suck. But I have heard of success 
using Ndiswrapper. This is a good howto:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?postid=877345#post877345

For trouble-free, reliable operation I always use the Senao/Engenius 2511.  
It's 802.11b, has about seven times more transmit power than other wireless 
adapters, and it works great in Linux. It also makes a nice homegrown access 
point.

Rant: Wireless adapter vendors play all kinds of games with chipsets. They 
change them frequently and without disclosure. And even when you think you 
have a chipset that is supported in Linux, many times the radio chip is good 
but the firmware is some weird proprietary piece of Windoze-only junk. Some 
of them even deliberately obscure the chipset IDs, so 'cardctl ident' or 
'lscpi' don't help. This tells you how to identify chipsets with the FCC 
registry:
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/5736/5/
They're not supposed to lie to the FCC, so this tells all.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Carla Schroder
http://www.tuxcomputing.com
check out my new book, the "Linux Cookbook", the ultimate Linux user's 
and sysadmin's guide! http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxckbk/
this message brought to you
by Libranet 2.8 and Kmail
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~