Bug 56536 – net-wireless/ipw2100-0.48 is horribly "sketchy"

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Armando Di Cianno (RETIRED) 2004-07-09 06:21:33 UTC]

When using ipw2100-0.48 drivers on gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.7-r8, net access is "sketchy" in that not all, but some, web sites, smtp servers, etc just won't connect.  The servers being connected to seem to permanently stall.  (SMTP wouldn't time out; web browsers did say "page didn't load" or anything.)  WEP was being used, and this driver did remove dependencies on hostap-driver in this release.  A downgrade to 0.46-r1 solved the problem.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use the ipw2100-0.48 driver, rather than the 0.46-r1 version that requires hostap-driver.
2. (Try wireless with WEP enabled as well.)
3.

Actual Results:  
Sketchiness.

Expected Results:  
Not be sketchy.

Portage 2.0.50-r8 (default-x86-2004.0, gcc-3.3.3, glibc-2.3.3.20040420-r0,
2.6.7-gentoo-r8)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.7-gentoo-r8 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1600MHz
Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16
Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r3
Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.3
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -O3 -pipe -funroll-loops"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
COMPILER="gcc3"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config
/usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/
/usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/
/usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -O3 -pipe -funroll-loops"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox userpriv usersandbox"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo http://128.213.5.34/gentoo/
http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="X aalib acl alsa apm avi berkdb crypt cups directfb encode foomaticdb gdbm
gif gpm gtk gtk2 guile imlib jpeg ldap libg++ libwww mad mikmod motif mpeg
ncurses nptl oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl png postgres python quicktime
readline ruby sdl slang spell ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex truetype x86 xml2 xmms
xv zlib"

(editted dmesg output for ipw2100-0.46)
hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
ipw2100: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Driver, 0.46_3
ipw2100: Copyright(c) 2003-2004 Intel Corporation
Detected ipw2100 PCI device at 0000:02:0b.0, mem: 0xD0201000-0xD0201FFF ->
f9b48000, irq: 9
wlan0: Using hotplug firmware load.
Registered as wlan0
ipw2100: Associated with 'Wireless' at 11Mbps, channel 1

mudra root # lspci -s 0b.0 -vv
0000:02:0b.0 Network controller: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 1043 (rev 04)
        Subsystem: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 2596
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- ParErr-
Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort-
<TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 64 (500ns min, 8500ns max), cache line size 10
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 9
        Region 0: Memory at d0201000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA
PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=1 PME-

[Comment 1 Peter Johanson (RETIRED) 2004-07-09 08:02:13 UTC]

Can you please post any output from dmesg when using the "sketchy" version?

0.49 was just released which fixed an MTU problem, i'll hopefully bump this today. That may be the problem you are experiencing.

[Comment 2 Armando Di Cianno (RETIRED) 2004-07-09 08:09:07 UTC]

I'm using the wireless at my workplace at the moment; however, gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.7-r9 just loaded it's source on my system after an rsync, so I'll try that and the ipw2100-0.49 if it's bumped today, and report back.

I hadn't heard of the MTU issue, but that would explain the nature of my problems.

[Comment 3 Peter Johanson (RETIRED) 2004-07-09 12:42:35 UTC]

Okay, the new ipw2100 ebuild is in portage. please test and let me know if this solves your problems. If you were using either av5100 or pbe5 modules, you will also need to install the rfswitch package i just commited. This is the new seperate package for these drivers.

Let me know how the new version works.

[Comment 4 Armando Di Cianno (RETIRED) 2004-07-10 13:57:46 UTC]

ipw2100-0.49 seems to remove all the "sketchy" issues I was running into before.  If it was the MTU problem, it does indeed seem to be solved.

[Comment 5 Peter Johanson (RETIRED) 2004-07-10 21:08:40 UTC]

Okay,

marking FIXED.