FC2 & Atmel based wireless cards

[hotdog]

After upgrading from FC1 to FC2 I had some difficutly getting my Atmel chip based PCMICA wireless card to work (it's a Belkin F5D60620u ver.2 PCMCIA card). I managed to find a solution, but has anyone else had problems with Atmel based wireless cards and FC2? And has anyone got a better fix than mine?

The problem:

First thing I tried was to recompile the atmelwlandriver (http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/news.html) that I'd used with no problems under FC1. I couldn't get it to compile on my machine though, lots of errors (anyone had success with this?). I did find out, though, that support for Atmel cards has been included in the 2.6.x kernels. It should just be a matter of installing the firmware from here (http://thekelleys.org.uk/) and editing pcmcia config as here (http://users.pandora.be/nespa/belkin/belkin.html). When I tried this though I get a kernel oops when inserting the card, so no joy there. This appears to be a known problem (http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=20&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&q=atmel_cs+patch&btnG=Search&meta=) caused by changes from the 2.6.5 to 2.6.6 kernel. FC2 use a 2.6.5 kernel of course, but I'm guessed that Fedora have back-ported whatever the source of the problem is into their 2.6.5 kernel... :(

My solution:

After lots of reading of threads on this bug I finally decided that my best option was to patch and recompile my kernel, at least until Fedora release an new, patched up kernel. This is what I used:

=============================
--- linux.orig/drivers/net/wireless/atmel_cs.c
+++ linux/drivers/net/wireless/atmel_cs.c
@@ -350,6 +350,9 @@ static struct {
/* This is strictly temporary, until PCMCIA devices get integrated into the device model. */
static struct device atmel_device = {
.bus_id = "pcmcia",
+ .kobj = {
+ .k_name = "atmel_cs"
+ }
};

static void atmel_config(dev_link_t *link)
=============================

I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to building kernels, and I couldn't get this patch to apply with "patch -p1 <../patchfile" (perhaps because it's intended for 2.6.6 kernels) but as it's only three lines added I could easily edit atmel_cs.c by hand. I then configured and compiled my kernel following the excellent guide here (http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/Kernel-Build-HOWTO.html), taking the opportunity to optimise the kernel a bit for my laptop. After rebooting with the new kernel the card worked perfectly, and I'm now running 'kernel-2.6.5-1.358hotdog' on my laptop and posting via the wireless LAN in my flat :D

So, anyone else got any experiences of Atmel cards with FC2?

[elgeeko]

I have the same problem with the Belkin F5D6020 ver.2 PCMCIA wireless card. Worked fine with the atmelwlandriver in Core 1. Tried to use the atmel_cs module with the hotplug firmware with Core 2 and end up getting an oops in the kernel.

Is there no other way to get this working other than patching atmel_cs and doing a complete kernel recompile?

[hotdog]

Applying the small patch to atmel_cs and recompiling the kernel isn't too problematic, and does give you the fringe benefit of an opportunity to tweak your kernel for your system. This was the first time I'd compiled a kernel but following the step by step guide that I linked in my first post it was really pretty straightforward.

If don't want to patch the kernel though it really ought to be possible to get the atmelwlandriver working with FC2. Have you tried downloading the latest release from sourceforge and compiling it under FC2? I tried, but got a lot of compiler errors and so decided to try atmel_cs instead.

If neither of these are looking good then I'd expect a future kernel update from Fedora will include a patch to fix the atmel_cs oops problem, at which point I'll probably stop using my own custom kernels. Can't say how long that'll be though...

Good luck!

[laurens]

Hi, had the same problem with a Sitecom wl011 pcmcia card. It also has an atmel chip. To compile the atmelwlan drivers I had to edit the Makefile for kernel 2.6. I changed the path for the kernel source to /lib/modules/<some version>/build. The destination directory for pcmcia I changed to /lib/modules/<some version>/kernel/drivers/pcmcia. I also had to edit /lib/modules/<some version>/build/arch/i386/Makefile to remove a -msoft-float compiler option that causes "unknown symbol " errors when loading the module.
I don't have the exact details here, sorry. If anyone wants the precise filenames and changes, I can post 'em later.

This gave me some modules like the pcmf502r that I was able to load without any trouble. I also got a good connection to my router through this card, so the module actually works :)

However, as soon as I got this module installed correctly, I got a pcmcia error. From reading on this forum and the redhat bugtracker it is quite common. I have to run:
modprobe yenta_socket
service pcmcia restart
or else no pcmcia slots are detected.

Now I still have a problem:
I installed the module and changed settings as described in the atmelwlandriver README. So I have an alias "atml0" for it in modprobe.conf, etc. When I insert the card it gets detected correctly, module loads fine, dhcp gives an ip address. When I remove the card from the slot I get a lot of errors from the kernel telling me the device has not been removed correctly. Inserting the card again can then mess things up enough for a kernel panic.
So I'd like to ask: how did you set up your card to get it working?

[hotdog]

It's a little while since I first set up my wireless card so my memory of the details may be a little suspect, but this is what I think I did:

For FC1 I downloaded, compiled and installed the atmtelwlandriver. The installer created an atmel.conf file in the /etc/pcmcia directory but there wasn't an entry in there for my Belkin card so I had to add the following:

card "Belkin F5D6020"
version "Belkin", "11Mbps-Wireless-Notebook-Network-Adapter"
manfid 0x01bf, 0x3302
bind "pcmf502re"

I didn't have to add any aliases in modules.conf (now modprobe.conf), at this point I just inserted the card (which automatically loaded the pcmf502re module) and configured the rest using the graphical system-network-config tool. The "New wireless connection" wizard makes this simple.

When upgrading to FC2 I didn't really have to set anything up after I'd installed my custom kernel modules. A new atmel.conf was generated which automatically binds my card to atmel_cs instead of pcmf502re, and the rest just works as before.

I never had any problems when removing the card. Even if I just remove if with the network up and running there are a few minor complaints in the system log before it brings the network down but nothing serious, and no problems when I put the card back in.

[laurens]

I also looked at atmel.conf ... my card was already there, it is bound to pcmf502r. I think this atmel.conf was installed along with the atmelwlan driver. I tried system-config-network, but my card isn't listed in the hardware section and it is not present in the list offered when I click "new". Do you know how to get it in that list? Maybe it has to do with this: following the README of atmelwlan I made the alias atml0 to the device. In Redhat 9 I had called it eth0 and it was visible. I will have to check that out.
I am hoping that system-config-network can configure the card better than me following that README so it will unload properly.

[elgeeko]

Thanks Hotdog.

As you suggested, I patched atmel_cs and built a custom kernel (I used the standard Fedora config file) and everything is now working fine.

I had one small hiccup. System-config-network crashed when the kernel build name contained more than one hyphen. Fortunately it was easy to tell from the error message were the problem was.

Other than that things went pretty smoothly.

[laurens]

I gave up on the atmelwlan driver :( Now I did as you suggested and everything works as a charm! :)
Thanks!

[kenlin]

I am using the linksys wusb11, which is a usb adapter.

my previous experience with this adapter is detailed here: http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2172&highlight=atmel

I have also tried the firmware at thekelleys, which resulted in fc2 thinking a floppy, mass storage, or usb audio device had been inserted.

Any suggestions?

[hotdog]

Just a quick update:

The new kernels for FC2 seem to have been patched to fix the firmware loading kernel panic problem. I tried the 2.6.6-1.427 kernel and it worked with no problems at all. Am just downloading 2.6.6-1.435 at the moment, but I'm sure that's OK too. Basically it seems there is no longer any need to patch and build your own kernel to use Atmel based wireless cards, provided you have an up to date FC2 kernel. :D

Of course, there are other reasons why you might still want to build your own kernel...

[jrmoe]

I have tried this with a Linksys WUSB11 v2.6 with Fedora Core 2 kernel version 2.6.6-1.383 as well as 2.6.6-1.435 and I had to remove the "-msoft-float" entry in the /lib/modules/<someversion>/build/arch/i386/Makefile as mentioned above to make the Warnings go away.
Also, I had to edit the files under the atmelwlandriver/src/usb directory and replace all instances of "wait_ms" with "msleep", which was causing other undefined Warnings. However, I am not sure if this is the proper fix for this issue. Once I compiled and installed the modules, the modules loaded fine when the USB device was connected, but iwconfig causes a segmentation fault when issuing "iwconfig amtl0 essid <my essid>". And removing the USB adapter caused other kernel errors which resulted in a system that would not shut down.
Is it possible that I missed a step?

[elgeeko]

Hi Hotdog,

Just upgraded to 2.6.6-1.435 and everything works fine without having to patch.

Thanks for all the help.

;)

[hentaijess]

OMGWTHBBQ!

I really need help installing this driver. I'm at my wits' end.

I know virtually nothing about how to do this kind of stuff, and trying to follow this is beyond my comprehension. There are so many people saying that they got this working, but they are really vague when it comes to explaining how. *beats head on desk*

I'm running a Belkin PCMCIA F5D6020 v. 2, and just upgraded from RH9 to FC2. We had the card working under RH9, but it crapped out on me when I upgraded, and I'm not having ANY luck trying to get this installed. I just upgraded to the 2.6.6-1.435 kernel.

I'm in the #fedora IRC channel, as HentaiJess. If anyone can help me, you can find me there, or email me at sloverj@oit.edu

Thanks,
Jess

[roguedaemon]

Card:
Belkin F5D6050 - Atmel AT76C503A chipset - PCMCIA

After some confusion from various random posts, hentaijess and I narrowed it down to this as of today with 2.6.6-1.435 on FC2 and the atmelwlandriver:

3 changes in Makefile.kernelv2.6:

KERNEL_SOURCE:=/lib/modules/$(KERNEL_VERSION)/build
PCMCIA_DES=/lib/modules/$(KERNEL_VERSION)/kernel/drivers/pcmcia

CCFLAGS := -DATMEL_WLAN -mno-soft-float

then: make clean ; make pcmcia buildonly=release ; make install

also, ifcfg-atml0 needed to be created as per the README file

that was pretty much it :cool:

[hentaijess]

*glee*

roguedaemon is awesome, this guy is really knowledgeable, and very very patient with n00bs (especially me!)


Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!

Jess

[hil]

I am new to Fedora Core 3 from Mandrake Linux. I have a CNET CNWLC-811 wireless pcmcia card. Will my atmel card work in FC-3? I haven't got a chance to try it yet. Any suggestions?