(Almost) got madwifi working, now fedora won't boot

[David Vernon]

On Thu, 2004-06-03 at 13:56, kusti wrote:
> I reinstalled fc2 and got madwifi working (ifconfig ath0 now finds my
> wlan card).  I needed help setting the network so I booted to windows
> and searched the net. I found some info but never could test it,
> bootup hanged while trying to start cups. And it still wont boot, it
> just stops loading and prints dmesg. Any ideas?

Yup. Look at (might wrap):
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=958273&group_id=82936&atid=567753

Seems that madwifi and Linux >= 2.6.5 don't like each other all that
much. The 2.6.4x kernel in SuSe 9.1 works according to the posts for
this bug.

You are having this issue if a look in /var/log/messages reveals
"kernel: Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual
address 00000xxx" around the other "ath" messages. 
(xxx seems to be 151 with the most recent versions of madwifi)

As for booting your system, press "I" at the next boot and don't start
pcmcia (if that is how your card loads. I am assuming the card is built
into your system since just removing it from the pcmcia slot would also
do the trick. The other option is to disable it in BIOS. 

There are mailing lists for madwifi @
http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=82936

You might ask them when/if this will be fixed.

Dave