kfoss Posted July 20, 2006 Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 Hi, I've been working to build a CarPC and have ran into some speedbumps, though not the literal ones. I started the project by using PCLinuxOS 0.93 MiniMe, since it was small and was Mandrake 9.2-based. I had the whole system running when I found a new Navigation application, RoadNav. Unfortunately, RoadNav requires libstdc++.so.6 and I only had libstdc++.so.5. So I upgraded. I made a fresh install of Mandriva 2006.0 which I also have running on my main PC and my HTPC, both running smoothly. The CarPC system consists of: 1. ECS C3VCM2 MITX motherboard (similar to a Epia 800MHz board) 2. Lilliput 7" 619GL Touchscreen LCD 3. Pharaos 360 USB GPS 4. Integrated CastleRock graphics with XvMC acceleration enabled and working with MPlayer My problem is that any time I try to add a Wireless LAN - USB device, my system hangs, crashes or I lose one of the other USB devices. I have tried to use three different WiFi devices (Netgear WG111, Airlink AWLL3026 & DLink DWL-G122) and all cause similar problems. With APCI=on and APIC enabled, when the wireless devices try to become active, the whole system freezes. I have checked the /var/log/messages and there is nothing, just some messages about the USB device connecting and then the next message is the "restart" line. With APCI=off and NOAPIC in LILO, at least the system doesn't hang when the device becomes active. An example of what it does is that when I reboot with the WiFi plugged in and configured, the touchscreen's USB interface no longer works. If the Wifi adapter is not plugged in and I reboot, the touchscreen works fine. When I then plug in the Wifi adapter, the USB GPS interface can't be found by the Nav application, even though the GPS driver and "gpsd" are running. It's confusing since all these devices worked on a Mdk9.2 based system, but 2006.0 doesn't. It's not the hardware that's failing, it's the OS. Where should I start looking correct this problem? Any ideas? [moved from Software by spinynorman] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted July 20, 2006 Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 Do you have PnP Aware OS turned off in your BIOS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kfoss Posted July 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 Do you have PnP Aware OS turned off in your BIOS? I will check that the moment I get home. Thx. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kfoss Posted July 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 Tyme, I will check it, but if this was the issue, wouldn't I have had a similar problem between the 9.2-based install and the 2006.0-based install? The BIOS has not changed since the original build. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted July 20, 2006 Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 The difference from 9.2 to 2006.0 is that, IIRC, Mandriva now uses udev - I forget what it used in 9.2, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't udev. Turning off PnP Aware OS forces the BIOS to give an IRQ to any devices that are attached, instead of letting the OS do it. If the issue is IRQ-related, this could resolve it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kfoss Posted July 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 So what could be happening is that when I connect a device or "make it active", I'm running out of IRQs or losing the IRQ associated with the original device attached? Thanks again, I learned something new today! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted July 20, 2006 Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 Yes, that's what could be happening. I'm not sure if it is, but it's my first guess ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted July 20, 2006 Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 mdk 9.2 used devfs instead of udev. However, pclos 0.93 uses udev and a fairly recent 2.6 kernel(2.6.17?) so I don't think it's a devfs vs udev issue. But give the PnP thing a try anyway; different kernels could react differently to that situation. Another thing to look at is your updates in mdv 2006; make sure you install all the updates. IIRC there were some udev/usb issues in mdv 2006 that were later corrected by the updates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kfoss Posted July 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 pmpatrick, During my troubleshooting efforts last night, one of the last things I did was to enter the update locations in urpmi. However, I felt it too late to attempt a kernel update safely, even though it seems relatively benign. I will attempt the PnP verification in the BIOS first, then the update. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kfoss Posted July 21, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 21, 2006 All, I've tried all the recommended courses of action, the BIOS changes has no effect or were already set. I also did the kernel update. I modified the lilo.conf file after the update and when I try to boot the new 2.6.12-24mdk kernel, the system does an automatic reboot. The current kernel still works. Either something is wrong with the kernel update process or the directions given on the Mandriva site are wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted July 21, 2006 Report Share Posted July 21, 2006 When you said you did the kernel update and modified the lilo.conf, what did you exactly do? You shouldn't need to modify the lilo.conf, because as soon as you do: urpmi kernel-2.6.12.24mdk and that will install the kernel and also modify lilo.conf at the same time and reapply to the MBR. So, would be nice to know what you've modified in lilo.conf because it could be this that screwed it up. Incidently, if you say it worked with pclinux, pmpatrick mentioned it has a 2.6.17 kernel. It could be that Mandriva's kernels don't support your usb wireless, but the newer 2.6.17 kernel does. Mandriva's kernel is 2.6.12, which is substantially different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murda Posted July 21, 2006 Report Share Posted July 21, 2006 (edited) The default Mandriva 2006 kernel (and later versions of Mandriva kernel) should include the driver for at least the D-Link adapter, but here's a guide on how to install the driver manually. Try that D-Link adapter, it has RT2570 chip inside, so the installation is pretty simple. I also have rt2500 chip in my laptop and Mandriva could use it without any problems. Now I have Fedora, and all I had to do was install the driver and everything runs smooth. Get the driver from here Read the installation guide from here Hope this helps. EDIT: And yes, my computer crashed all the time before I installed the driver (on Mandriva LE 2005 and FC5). Don't know what's it with these RaLink cards... That Netgear adapter you have, uses prism54 chip, and I remember that I've seen the driver on some of the Mandriva repos. And lastly, that Airlink adapter uses Zydas 1211 chip. Search for drivers designed for these and all should be fine. Edited July 21, 2006 by Murda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kfoss Posted July 21, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 21, 2006 All, So, would be nice to know what you've modified in lilo.conf because it could be this that screwed it up. Actually, I did exactly what was recommended. I used the "urpmi kernel-2.6.12.24.mdk". It downloaded, installed and did a LILO change. I proceeded to reboot, why question the packagers? Well I should have. The kernel installation modified the symlinks in the /boot directory so that vmlinuz pointed to the newest vmlinuz-2.6.12-24mdk file and left the old 2.6.12-12mdk.i586... file alone. All the other symlinks were modified as well. Now I was never able to restart. After using a rescue distro, I found that the lilo.conf file was not modified properly to match the changes to the /boot directory. At this point I personally had not done any modifications to anything. In the lilo.conf file, the new -24mdk was added but the kernel and initrd image it was pointing to were not the vmlinuz and initrd.img links, but the actual -24mdk files. This should have still worked if I chose the -24mdk boot option, it didn't. What was worse, was that it left the original -12mdk to the symlinks, which in the background were all the new -24mdk files. By rights if the install worked, choosing the default -12mdk or the new -24mdk option from the boot menu should get me a -24mdk-based OS. Neither worked. So when I say I modified the lilo.conf, it was to allow me to boot back into the original -12mdk system, which it does now. The -24mdk system doesn't work. Just for your knowledge, I also tried the -23mdk version and I get the same result as the -24mdk version. Now on the subject of the Wireless USB devices. Thanks for all the links, but it's not the hardware, which is why I put the post in the software section, since it is a kernel problem IMHO. I've been using the AirLink USB devices for over a year now, and currently have one running with the ZyDas ZD1211 drivers on my HTPC (using Mandriva 2006.0!). I've swapped them out and they both work fine on the HTPC system. I've also tried the DLink dongle and built the RT2570 drivers, which seem to work, but the moment the device tries to Tx/Rx the system freezes. This is the same thing that happens with the ZyDas based USB device. So this tells me it's the OS, not the hardware, nor the drivers. I've been through the BIOS and made all the recommended changes too. The only thing I haven't done is the kernel update, since it isn't working. Any ideas on why the kernel update isn't working using urpmi? My next step would be to try a kernel upgrade to something similar to the pclinuxos kernel (2.6.17) by doing a manual kernel build. Once again, even when following all the guides, I've never has a kernel build and upgrade work properly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kfoss Posted July 22, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 22, 2006 I found the kernel update problem. The kernel that is being used after the install is the 2.6.12-12mdk-i586-up-1GB. The up-1GB makes a difference. I urpmi'd the -24mdk-i586-up-1GB and it finally worked!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kfoss Posted July 22, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 22, 2006 The new kernel was added but this did not change the problems with the USB Wireless LAN devices crashing. I am going to attempt a manual kernel update and see where that take me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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