[ydl-gen] [SOLVED] PowerBook G4 wireless problems on YDL 6.0

Wed Apr 9 16:14:46 MDT 2008

On Wed, Apr 09, 2008 at 08:20:18AM -0400, Derick Centeno wrote:
> 
> [considerations on OSX evolution]
> [...]
> For me this made Tiger a "downgrade" and most likely from what you shared,
> Leopard may be a more profoundly pretty "downgrade" as well.

I essentially agree, the OSX GUI is also getting slower due to
new stupid bells and whistles.  But I have no choice, I have to follow
the world. I teach two simulation courses and my laptop has to be 
reasonably aligned with the students' machines.  I also rely heavily
on MacPorts stuff for the OSX side, for Panther MacPorts/DarwinPorts is
now in a completely abandoned state, and the maintainers' activity is 
definitely focused on Leopard.

> Thank God for TSS and their focus on function in producing YDL6!  

Yes, it's very nice to have a company committed to Linux on PowerPC.

> > [...]  IN both cases, by "does not work" I mean that the
> > interface refuses to start with
> > 
> > > #ifconfig eth1 up
> > 
> > Can you tell me what you have in /etc/modprobe.conf ?
> 
> I'm not using the interface at all.  My method, a variant of what Chris Murtagh
> used and demonstrated by-passes the interface entirely.  The challenge in this
> particular situation is that you are still thinking like an Apple user where
> the interface is the function or application.  

No no no, I was thinking UNlike an Apple user and with "interface"
I was referring to a "network interface" , the "if" in ifconfig!
You can by-pass those and still be connected only if you go back to
Kermit on serial ports :-)

> However, just so I'm not a "stick in the mud" or non-cooperative, here's my
> modprobe.conf:
> 
> alias eth0 sungem
> alias eth1 ssb    <==============

This was useful.

I solved the problem.  I _believe_ that the key issue was that the new
Redhat/Fedora derivatives (and YDL 6) assume the presence of recent 
versions of the Broadcom drivers.  The thread that inspired me was:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/printthread.php?t=171176
(not specific to Apple hardware, but specific to Broadcom devices).

So I did the following (some of these things may not be relevant but
I report them for sake of completeness):

- Throw away the old drivers I previously stored in /lib/firmware

- Get the latest 'firmware cutter' program,
    http://download.berlios.de/bcm43xx/b43-fwcutter-009.tar.bz2
  unpack it and compile it.  It does not compile under OSX 10.5 with Xcode
  ("error: byteswap.h: No such file or directory"), but it compiles
  fine on Linux (either Intel or PowerPC).

- Get this firmware file:
  http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
  and unpack it.

- store the firmware files in /lib/firmware using
  (path)/b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware (path)/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta.o
  For the record, I did this on a Intel Linux and then copied the files
  but it should not matter how you do it.

- 22 firmware files will be stored in a subdirectory /lib/firmware/b43/ ;
  they should not stay directly in /lib/firmware as with the previous
  drivers.

- Make sure that /etc/modprobe.conf contains the line:
	alias eth1 ssb

- Manually edit /etc/sysconfig/network-script/ifcfg-eth1. In my case:

-------------------------------------------
# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
GATEWAY=192.168.2.1
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=none
HWADDR=00:11:24:27:5e:66
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
IPADDR=192.168.2.129
ONBOOT=yes
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=yes
ESSID=(name of my wireless network)
CHANNEL=9
MODE=Auto
RATE=Auto
DOMAIN=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
-------------------------------------------

(I use static IPs.  I copied the HWADDR of my card from the output of 
ifconfig on OSX).

As a final note, my wireless network was originally on channel 13, which 
is valid in Europe but not in the US.  The driver assumed to be in the US
and choked on channel 13, insisting that it has to be <=11.   So, not
being in an antagonist mood, I moved the whole network to channel 9 which
nobody in the neighborhood seems to use.

These are the relevant section of the boot log:

--------------------------------------------------------------
Using PowerMac machine description
Total memory = 1536MB; using 4096kB for hash table (at cfc00000)
Linux version 2.6.23-9.ydl6.1 (root at build2.terraplex.com) (gcc version 4.1.1 20070105 (Red Hat 4.1.1-52.ydl.1)) #1 SMP Sat Jan 26 19:47:37 EST 2008
[...]
bcm43xx driver
[...]
b43-phy0: Broadcom 4306 WLAN found
b43-phy0 debug: Found PHY: Analog 2, Type 2, Revision 2
b43-phy0 debug: Found Radio: Manuf 0x17F, Version 0x2050, Revision 2
b43-phy0 debug: DebugFS (CONFIG_DEBUG_FS) not enabled in kernel config
phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'simple'
net eth1: device_rename: sysfs_create_symlink failed (-17)
[...]
b43-phy0 debug: Loading firmware version 351.126 (2006-07-29 05:54:02)
b43-phy0 debug: Chip initialized
b43-phy0 debug: 30-bit DMA initialized
b43-phy0 debug: Wireless interface started
b43-phy0 debug: Adding Interface type 2
b43-phy0 debug: Using hardware based encryption for keyidx: 0, mac: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth1: link is not ready
[...]
(later proceeding with authentication and bringing the link up automatically)
[...]
--------------------------------------------------------------

I have no idea about the origin of the device_rename error. That error
does not seem to have a practical impact (but time will tell!).

Hope it helps other people stumbling into this.  I hope that this stuff
will get fixed in YDL 6.1.

furio