kernel panic on reboot with ndiswrapper

[Cerf]

I am using an old hp omnibook 900 as a console. Before I installed a wireless car with ndiswrapper, when I reboot the computer with #reboot, the computer is rebooted successfully.

However, when I run

iwconfig wlan0 enc <wep key>
iwconfig wlan0 essid <ssid>
dhcpcd wlan0 -d


And then reboot, I get a kernel panic. The kernel panic happens after the root file system has been unmounted, so there is no data corruption happening as far as I can tell.

Unfortunately, I can't see the entire message as it is a small screen

EIP: 0060...
EFLAGS: 000...
eax: 00000... ebx:....
....

Process events/0 (pid: 4, ti=...)
Stack:...

Call Trace:
[<cabee68a>] io_irq_isr+0x2a/0x50 [ndiswrapper]
[<c01443b5>] handle_IRQ_event+0x25/0x60
...


Do I need to explicitly stop the ndiswrapper before rebooting?

[JohnT]

Immediately after booting up..try using this command to diagnose. dmesg [options]
How to more effectively use "dmesg"... (http://www.linfo.org/dmesg.html)

[Cerf]

There is nothing related ndiswrapper in dmesg. Either the ring buffer is just too small or the message is not being saved (this is after the root filesystem is unmounted).

I tried to unload the module with "rmmod ndiswrapper" just before reboot, but that made no difference. Is that the correct way for unloading ndiswrapper?

[JohnT]

Then I suggest a little homework possibly about ndiswrapper. It would be much easier for you if you understood some theory and documentation, in that respect you would be able to garner a little insight into the usage, also by doing you would benefit by learning some of the other tools in Linux for you to accomplish these tasks.
NDISWRAPPER (http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.php?/component/option,com_openwiki/Itemid,33/)

[JohnT]

I tried to unload the module with "rmmod ndiswrapper" just before reboot, but that made no difference. Is that the correct way for unloading ndiswrapper?

The module had not yet loaded...to prevent the module from loading at all you need to specify under /etc/modules.conf, at least there should be a file so named. I am not aware of your flavor of Linux.This file is used to load all modules which arent compiled into the kernel. Comment out any lines which have the module you dont want loaded. Reboot.
The link I gave you on NDISWRAPPER has module help at the bottom of the installation page.

[Cerf]

I did some digging. The kernel panic seems to be when "/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia stop" is run... still have no idea how to work around.

[Cerf]

So I cheated...

I went into /etc/rc.d/rc.6 and found where the PCMCIA devices are shutdown:

if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia ]; then
. /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia stop
# The cards might need a little extra time here to deactivate:
/bin/sleep 5
fi


And I commented out ". /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia stop"!

It seems to reboot fine now. If anyone know of a better solution, I would love to hear it!

[JohnT]

Not knowing your setup or Linux version....I would point you here (http://tldp.org/HOWTO/PCMCIA-HOWTO-4.html) and maybe you can become more familiar with this process and in so doing perhaps find a better solution for your particular needs.