# wlan rtl8180 with 2.6.25-gentoo-r1

## Junghans

I have a Realtek wireless PCI card with rtl8185 chip, till now I was using

ndiswrapper, which works quite well.

With kernel version 2.6.25 I want to change to the native driver (rtl8180)

After replacing ndiswrapper by rtl8180 it seems to works fine (even with several reboots),

but after the next cold start, the boot process hangs, while starting net.wlan0.

I try to add the realtek (phy) modules by hand, due to dmesg telling me phy0 is connected to  rtl8185, but it does not help.

Can ndiswrapper does some init to card, which is not done by rtl8180 ?

Additional infos:

lspci

```
00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)
```

wpa_supplicant with wpa2, works fine for ndiswrapper and rtl8180 (when not cold starting). Conf files were not changed.

kernel (2.6.25-gentoo-r1) parameters 

```
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 pci=routeirq video=sisfb:mode:1024x768x32,mem:12288,rate:70
```

without pci=routeirq card is not detected, irqpoll also works.

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## Junghans

After playing a bit around with the encryption of the access points, it seem the modules rtl8180  has problem with wpa

Newer version of wpa_supplicant or NetworkManager lead to the same result:

Hang up, when trying to make a connection.

I will for now stick to ndiswrapper, let's try  again later.

----------

## paluszak

Please tell me, which native driver did you install? The one from portage?

J.

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## Junghans

It is the kernel module from 2.6.25-r2, called rtl8180, which uses the mac80211 stack.

The net-wireless/rtl8180, also called rtl8180-sa2400,  is surely not working with wpa.

Do you have different experience ?

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## pappy_mcfae

You are wise to stick with ndiswrapper. I tried the b43 kernel driver, and it was slow, unstable, and prone to failing for no apparent reason. You may be having the same sort of problem with yours. 

Blessed be!

Pappy

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## paluszak

 *Ottxor wrote:*   

> It is the kernel module from 2.6.25-r2, called rtl8180, which uses the mac80211 stack.
> 
> The net-wireless/rtl8180, also called rtl8180-sa2400,  is surely not working with wpa.
> 
> Do you have different experience ?

 

I used open source drivers from the portage until kernel changed so much that they started to fail to compile. I prefer to stick to more stable soft even at the cost of using closed Windows drivers now. AFAIK 2.6.25 is still quite unstable.

J.

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## Akhouk

What is the conclusion here? Should I try the source for rtl8180 or go for ndiswrapper?

Has anyone got a working configuration for either that they can share?

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## paluszak

 *Akhouk wrote:*   

> What is the conclusion here? Should I try the source for rtl8180 or go for ndiswrapper?
> 
> Has anyone got a working configuration for either that they can share?

 

I've been using ndiswrapper for quite some time and generally speaking I have nothing to complain about. Just download Windows drivers from RTL web page or use some other drivers provided with your card or dongle, unpack them somewhere and type:

```
ndiswrapper -i inffilename
```

where inffilename stands for Windows driver description file with .INF extension. ndiswrapper will copy needed files to its own directory and voila, everything should work fine.

J.

----------

## Akhouk

What about the rtl8180 driver that has made it way into the vanilla 2.6.25 kernel.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_rtl8180

Has anyone tried that yet and had success. I don't really want to use ndiswrapper as I need full functionality from the card and as I understand it ndiswrapper is limited to ad-hoc and mangaged mode.

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## IvanMajhen

I have cardbus belkin f5d6020 ver3 with rtl8180 and philips radio. It works nice with in-kernel 2.6.25 driver.

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## Junghans

At that time I had 3 possibilities:

- net-wireless/rtl8180 from portage -> I could not compile it with gentoo-sources 2.6.24, have never try again.

- ndiswrapper -> work fine with wpa2, still using it

- rtl8180 from gentoo-sources >=2.6.25-r1, works, but not with wpa2, always freezes when starting wpa_supplicant

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## Akhouk

The thing is I need to run multi-mode which I think the ndiswrapper doesn't support.

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## Mark Clegg

I've got a Belkin F5D7000 (PCI ID 1799:700f). I tried ndiswrapper with both the belkin drivers, and those from the Realtek website, and found it extremely unpredictable. Most of the time, it failed to work on boot, but reloading the drivers got it going again.

Following advice from this thread.. I switched to 2.6.24-git21 with immediate success prior to an ~x86 gentoo-sources-2.6.25 arriving with the new drivers in.  It's running with WPA2 and is rock solid.  I think I'm now on gentoo-sources-2.6.25-r4 (still ~x86), waiting for stable to catch up.

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## Junghans

Now I have switched to  gentoo-sources-2.6.25-r5 and rtl8180 (from that kernel version) seems to work (also with wpa2).

I can even remove "irqpoll" from the kernel parameter list.

So far there is only one open issue: Somethings (after a warmboot) and the shutdown process hangs at wlan0.

----------

