[elrepo] RTL 8187B driver

[Phil Perry]

Del wrote:
> Phil Perry wrote:
>>> The RTL 8187B driver is available in the newer (2.6.27+) kernels and 
>>> would be a useful driver backport for ELRepo.  Once again I'm unsure as 
>>> to how to do this but if someone gives me some guidelines I'll give it a go.
>>>
>>> Information here:
>>>
>>> http://rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page
>>> http://www.datanorth.net/~cuervo/blog/rtl8187b-drivers-and-patches/
>>> http://www.datanorth.net/~cuervo/blog/linux-on-the-satellite-a215-s7407/
>>> http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/rtl8187
>>>
>>> Hopefully someone can make use of this information and bring this driver 
>>> into ELRepo.
>>>
>>> Thanx,
>>>
>>> Del
>> I had a very quick look at this one, and the current mainline kernel 
>> source doesn't build out of tree against EL5.3. Looks like it might be a 
>> bit of work to backport a working driver.
> 
> OK.
> 
>> Again, could you please test the latest testing kernel from Red Hat just 
>> to check it's not been backported for EL5.4.
> 
> Have done, no luck.
> 
> The current kernel has a driver for the RTL8187 but not RTL8187B 
> chipsets.  The USB bus sees the hardware but the driver mistakenly 
> identifies it as an RTL8180 and doesn't bring up the network interface.
> 
> There are some patches the the driver that's in 2.6.24 to make it work 
> for RTL8187B but I'm not sure how easy it would be to backport those 
> patches to 2.6.18.
> 
> Del

OK, thanks for the feedback and info.

I'll start having a proper look at this next week unless anyone else 
jumps in to take ownership beforehand. Not making any promises we'll be 
able to get a working driver though, but we'll give it a go :)

One further thing - does this driver need any additional firmware? If 
so, a link to that would be great.

Regards,

Phil