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Author Topic: Questions about Network Adaptor Support  (Read 9473 times)

Offline SamK

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Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« on: September 09, 2010, 12:28:26 AM »
TC is becoming well known as natively supporting a wide range of network adaptors. This type of out-of-the-box functionality is one of the strengths of TC as it is very user friendly.

How is it decided which adaptors/chipsets are supported?  Is it by request or some other mechanism?

I have a USB adaptor based on rtl8192  which is working well using ndiswrapper and the WinXP driver. Is this in line for native support?
   

Offline curaga

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #1 on: September 09, 2010, 12:50:59 AM »
Everything stable in the kernel is supported.
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline SamK

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #2 on: September 09, 2010, 01:14:39 AM »
Everything stable in the kernel is supported.
Please will you clarify this a little as I am unclear what you mean?

Is the rtl8192 currently regarded as unstable?  Is there a central reference available of stable rtl devices?
 

Offline curaga

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #3 on: September 09, 2010, 01:28:28 AM »
http://kernel.xc.net/index.cgi?version=2.6.33&arch=x86

Everything under the staging menu is considered unstable. The three 8192 (su,e,u) drivers are there, I'm afraid.

edit: This seems to be still the case in 2.6.35.
« Last Edit: September 09, 2010, 01:31:12 AM by curaga »
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Offline SamK

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #4 on: September 09, 2010, 01:40:39 AM »
http://kernel.xc.net/index.cgi?version=2.6.33&arch=x86

Everything under the staging menu is considered unstable. The three 8192 (su,e,u) drivers are there, I'm afraid.

edit: This seems to be still the case in 2.6.35.
Thanks for that - this is a completely new area for me - no experience of it at all.

I realize that you cannot supply a definitive answer to this, however, it it usual that the drivers from this list (in this case 3 x 8192) in due course become stable?  If so, when the TC kernel is updated is an announcement made of the added drivers?
 

Offline curaga

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #5 on: September 09, 2010, 04:58:19 AM »
When they are stable enough, they will be moved out of the staging area.

TC kernel updates are usually only once per major version.
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline tinypoodle

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #6 on: September 09, 2010, 05:57:49 AM »
This would rather be for the request thread, but an idea would be that someone could build all staging wireless drivers, for a wireless-staging-*.tcz.
From what it appears, wireless drivers from the staging tree are relatively widely used by end users.
"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Niklaus Wirth - A Plea for Lean Software (1995)

Offline curaga

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #7 on: September 09, 2010, 06:00:17 AM »
They also tend to drop connections, oops, crash, and otherwise be much worse than even ndiswrapper :P
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline tinypoodle

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #8 on: September 09, 2010, 07:08:36 AM »
Yes, it is a choice of the lesser of evils, but I would always prefer to at least give a native driver under development a try, before having to resort to ndiswrapper.

OTOH i have experienced dropping of connections even with a driver which is in stable kernel branch, but not since very long (rt2500usb)
"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Niklaus Wirth - A Plea for Lean Software (1995)

Offline SamK

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #9 on: September 12, 2010, 01:40:00 AM »
Is there a command in TC3 that will list the kernel supported drivers/chipsets?  If so it will be useful as a reference when considering a purchase.
 

Offline curaga

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #10 on: September 12, 2010, 01:58:53 AM »
Drivers (wired): ls /lib/modules/*/kernel/drivers/net -R
Drivers (wireless): the .list file of the wireless-2.6xx extension

Pci ids recognized by each driver can be seen in /lib/modules/*/modules.usbmap and modules.pcimap.
For wireless ids to appear there the extension has to be loaded.
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline SamK

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #11 on: September 12, 2010, 02:17:23 AM »
Thanks.

Offline SamK

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #12 on: September 19, 2010, 02:54:47 AM »
Reporting success.

After a few days break, I decided to return to attempting to compile the driver for this device and have finally achieved it.  What follows is partly a memory jogger for me and partly an assist for other TC users.

From the Realtek web site I downloaded the most recent sources I could find:
RTL8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.0006.20100625.zip.
From the zip file it seems this provides a driver that is suitable for:
rtl8712, rtl8188, rtl8191, and rtl8192SU devices.

Following a suggestion on #tinycorelinux (thanks jls_legalize) the driver compiled and produced 8712u.ko, which I then compressed to 8712u.ko.gz and turned into an extension:
rtl8712u-2.6.33.3-tinycore.tcz
This places the module in the same path as those in wireless-2.6.33.3-tinycore.tcz and is listed in OnBoot.

The result seems to work well.  No dropped connections no crashes.  Connection to a router using a 40Mhz frequency, N standard data rate, WPA2 security and 100% signal strength, all give dependable consistent results.
 

Offline JackBug

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #13 on: January 14, 2011, 10:49:26 PM »
SamK,
 
 EXACTLY what steps did you take to compile the driver?

When I try to "make", I get the error  /lib/modules/2.6.33.3-tinycore/build - no such file or directory

I cannot find any build file or directory under /lib/modules/2.6.33.3-tinycore or any where on the system

ANY help appreciated.

Regards.

Offline Juanito

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Re: Questions about Network Adaptor Support
« Reply #14 on: January 15, 2011, 02:18:47 AM »
When I try to "make", I get the error  /lib/modules/2.6.33.3-tinycore/build - no such file or directory

I'd guess this would be taken care of by loading the linux-headers-2.6.33.3-tinycore extension.

If not, you'll need to unpack the kernel source somewhere and make a symlink /lib/modules/2.6.33.3-tinycore/build that points to it.