IBM T40p: em0/ath0 failure and PCMCIA difficulties

[Peter Schuller]

Hello,

I recently installed FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE[1] on a an IBM ThinkPad T40p. To my 
surprise, none of the three different network interfaces I was hoping would 
work do. I was thinking I would post here first for comments before I start 
submitting bug reports and such, in case they are known problems or easily 
solved. I'll detail one at a time.

First off, em0. The gigabit nic supposedly works in 5.0 but broke[2] at least 
on the IBM X31 somewhere between that and 5.1. I am having the exact same 
problem - the driver complaining about invalid EEPROM checksum.

I tried copying the driver from 5.0 and running it in CURRENT (see below on 
the 5.1->CURRENT transition), which almost worked. The driver recognized the 
card and got loaded, but kept printing link up/down messages to te kernel log 
(network traffic non-operational). I also tried commenting out the EEPROM 
cheksum check in the new driver; it then failed upon reading the MAC address 
claiming it was invalid.

As far as I can determine, this bug doesn't seem to be in GNATS. Unless 
someone says otherwise, I'll submit a bug report on this. Is there a 
workaround perhaps?

Secondly, the built-in wireless NIC doesn't work. I was actually expecting 
this to not work; but support for the Atheros Communications chipset was 
recently added in CURRENT[3], so I decided to cvsup CURRENT[4] and try it. I 
added the "ath" and "ath_hal" devices to the kernel config and recompiled. 

The driver found the card fine, and all ifconfig commands completed 
successfully. However the WiFi indicator light on the laptop remains turned 
off, and the interface never gets associated with any wireless LAN in the 
area, even though I'm pretty darned sure I'm using the correct settings (WEP 
and all).

I suspect it's a matter of "activating" the NIC somehow. Is this a driver 
problem or is there some generic way to do this in FreeBSD that I'm not aware 
of? My experience with *working* wireless in *BSD is limited to an Orinoco 
card on NetBSD - where ifconfig up was all that was required to activate it, 
so I don't know if I'm missing something or if there's a real problem.

Thirdly and lastly, since I was expecting to have trouble with the built-in 
WiFi card I always planned on using an older Orinocco card for the near 
future. However, as it turns out, I get a kernel trap 12[5] whenever I boot 
with the card inserted into a slot. The same thing happens with two other 
cards (one old 3Com ethernet card, and a new modern Atheros based PCMCIA).

The kernel trap happens while the kernel is still booting - userland stuff 
never gets a chance to start.

HOWEVER, and I noticed this now sa I type, if I insert the card after the
system has already booted, it works perfectly! I can hotswap back and
forth without difficulties, I just can't boot with any card inserted.

Similarly, when the internal Bluetooth card is enabled, I get the same
kernel trap during boot sa I do with a PCMCIA card inserted, even though I
believe the Bluetooth card is on the USB bus.

[1] I specifically wanted 5.1-RELEASE or newer because of the Bluetooth 
support. Also I understand 4.x doesn't support CardBus at all. I am however 
aware that 5.x is still not considered the production release.

[2] http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/net/2003-05/0003.html

[3] http://news.gw.com/freebsd.current/39492

[4] Yes, I know this isn't recommended for non-developers and such; but then 
again if it means I can submit a bug report for the driver, it doesn't hurt.

[5] "page fault whilte in kernel mode", fault code "supervisor write, page not 
present". Current process = "0 (swapper)" and stupped at = 
"ithread_add_handler+0x143:  movl   %ebx,0(%eax)"

Any thoughs/comments are highly appreciated!

Thanks!

-- 
/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB

PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller <peter.schuller at infidyne.com>'
Key retrival: Send an E-Mail to getpgpkey at scode.org
E-Mail: peter.schuller at infidyne.com Web: http://www.scode.org


----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB

PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller <peter.schuller at infidyne.com>'
Key retrival: Send an E-Mail to getpgpkey at scode.org
E-Mail: peter.schuller at infidyne.com Web: http://www.scode.org