# Realtek RTL-8185 Wireless Lan card Hang on Up [Solved]

## omerkh

Hi,

I am fixing up a new "old" system. My wireless card is recognized but when I try to "up" it the system hangs. I am using the built-in kernel driver of gentoo-sources 2.6.34-gentoo-r1. If I give ifconfig wlan0 up ...... the system hangs.

Here are some outputs:

ifconfig wlan0

```
wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 94:0c:6d:ee:58:91  

          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 

          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

```

lspci

```

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 01)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 81)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 01)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 01)

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)

01:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 02)

01:00.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 02)

01:01.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller

01:02.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)
```

lspci -k

```
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 01)

   Subsystem: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface

   Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01)

   Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 5641

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)

   Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 5641

   Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)

   Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 5641

   Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)

   Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 5641

   Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)

   Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 5641

   Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 81)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 01)

   Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 5641

   Kernel driver in use: PIIX_IDE

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 01)

   Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 5641

   Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)

   Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 0208

   Kernel driver in use: Intel ICH

01:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 02)

01:00.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 02)

01:01.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller

   Subsystem: Netgear FA311 / FA312 (FA311 with WoL HW)

   Kernel driver in use: natsemi

01:02.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)

   Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller

   Kernel driver in use: rtl8180

```

Any ideas?

OmarLast edited by omerkh on Sat Aug 07, 2010 8:29 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## BradN

As a troubleshooting step, try other livecds that are known to support that wireless chip.

If they don't work then try re-seating all the pci cards in the system, sometimes a bad connection to a card can cause bizarre problems.  I have a wireless card with a crappy edge connector that will do anything from not show up at all to corrupt transferred data to crash the machine when it's not making a good connection.

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## omerkh

Well ... it works now. I guess rtl8180 likes being a module instead of kernel built-in. 

```
Device Driver ->

  Networking Device Support -> 

    Wireless LAN ->

      <M> Realtek 8180/8185 PCI support
```

And now it works .....

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## BradN

This could be a side effect of bad initialization somewhere - if the card is started early enough in the kernel before something else is set a certain way it can behave differently than if it's loaded at the very end.

In any event, it should be a fine workaround as long as it works stably like that, and once the real bug in the kernel is fixed there should be no problems even with it built in.

----------

