Just tried to install, compile and use newest testing gentoo-sources-2.6.13-r3. Alas, I've found that it doesn't play nicely with ndiswrapper. During bootup, there was a notice on the screen: * unable to load ndiswrapper Ok, I thought, it's a kernel module that needs to be recompiled after kernel upgrade. Typical. It quickly turned out not to be the case... During remerging the ndiswrapper it displayed a following warning: *** WARNING: Kernel seems to have 4K size stack option (CONFIG_4KSTACKS) removed; many Windows drivers will need at least 8K size stacks. You should read wiki about 4K size stack issue. Don't complain about crashes until you resolve this. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. unmask "sys-kernel/gentoo-sources ~x86" in /etc/portage/package.keywords 2. rm /usr/src/linux 3. emerge -avu gentoo-sources (it gave me 2.6.13-r3, and /usr/src/linux -> linux-2.6.13-gentoo-r3) 4. cd /usr/src/linux 5. cat /proc/config.gz | gunzip > .config 6. make oldconfig && make menuconfig 7. compile, install, change /boot/grub/grub.conf 8. reboot 9. emerge ndiswrapper 10. try using wifi card (hint: no luck) 11. reboot 12. try using wifi card (hint: no luck) 13. reboot again, this time with the "old" kernel 14. remerge ndiswrapper 15. use wifi (hint: ok!) Actual Results: As you can see, 2.6.13 kernel doesn't play nicely with ndiswrapper. My wifi card (ASUS WL-167G) drivers refused to work with it. It's definitely an issue with forcing 4KB stacks upon Linux users. Expected Results: I'm not sure if it's possible at all to make it work again. I just wanted to post a warning that something breaks after upgrade. And I'm unsure if changing/patching ndiswrapper would help here. If the current policy of dropping features by the kernel developers continues, we all will be forced to stick to the old kernels... Just like my current gentoo-sources-2.6.12-r10. All is well - and I still can use my wifi to report this :)
Is there something that prevents you from changing the option to add a 8K stack again? I must have misunderstood the problem.
Hmm, I don't understand either. Recompile your kernel w/ 8K stacks and reopen if it still does not work then.
Hmm. I did as you've suggested. And in short - it worked. However, I needed to enable "Kernel Hacking", even though up to the 2.6.12-r10 I never needed that. Maybe there's something wrong with the ndiswrapper ebuild? But as my wi-fi works again, it's not such a big issue. And finding the 8K/4K stack option was not so easy... But anyway, thanks for the motivation!
Thanks for reporting back, closing.
