Using Raqcop development image in VM

[bplaa.yai]

Hi,

So far I'm an happy raqcop user.
For the past few days I've been trying to compile the latest madwifi 0.9.4 drivers for the dlink dwl-g520 I installed in my raq3 (for using the wlan-ap addon).
Up to now my attempts in cross compiling the driver are unsuccessful (on an 2.6.27 machine, using 2.4.36 kernel sources and gcc-3.4) : all modules (wlan.o, ath_hal.o) seems to load fine on the raqcop machine, but loading ath_pci.o just crashes insmod.
So I wanted to give a try to the raqcop development images in a VM (I tried on vmware and virtualbox) but, when the OS boots, it stops after "INIT: entering runlevel: 3", and after a long time I get the message "INIT: Id "1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes" and "INIT: no more processes left in this runlevel". I get the same result in vmware and virtualbox. I also tried installing from the iso development image, but I get the same result.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious ?

Thanks for any pointer.

[Davesworld]

The Raqcop devel image will only run well on a Raq/Qube 3/4, there are no VT's in Raqcop to be able to use something with graphics output. Had I left them in you would have a lot of errors booting a Cobalt as it is headless. You can install via iso to a virtual image as well but you won't be able to actually boot vmware with it, you would have to winimage the virtual disk to a Cobalt harddisk and then put that in the Raq. You definitely need a spare Cobalt to do this. Otherwise, you might as well use a standard IPCop devel VMWare install. Modules compiled on a standard IPCop devel environment should work just fine with the Raqcop kernel. The Cobalt drivers embedded in the bzipped kernel image don't really have an effect on any standard driver modules of the same version kernel.

Before you go any further, there aren't many wlan cards that actually will work in a Raq/Qube including the 550. The only pci cards of any kind that will work in this hardware are ones that do a self init, the pci init function has never worked in Cobalt hardware and a friend of mine who has been tinkering with building an updated rom image has been dissecting this hardware as well as talking with some of the original Cobalt engineers, namely Tim Hockin. He was attempting to fix the pci init in a future rom image but it's not looking very good if even possible to fix it.

The only good news is that aside from wlan hardware, most other pci hardware does it's own init function. 

As far as wifi cards I own which are many now, the only one I have gotten to work is the Cisco Aironet chipped cards but those are only 802.11b. The Author of the WLAN addon who does monitor this forum, has a few raqs himself and the only atheros card he managed to get working was a cardbus version in a pci pcmcia reader (really a pci to pcmcia bridge just like in a laptop) My Aironet card that worked is actually a cardbus card integrated into a pci card. My only guess is that pci to pcmcia bridges take care of the pci init issue.

Last year we populated a thread here purely on trying to get this to work. BTW, the drivers that come with the WLAN addon will load just fine on our kernel provided it is the same version, ie 2.4.36, you simply have to move them to the -cobalt kernel and run depmod.

What do I use for blue here? A Cisco 1231 AP bridged to the blue nic. I wouldn't have room for a wlan card now anyway on my daily router as I just picked up a Viking ADSL2+ PCI card so my DSL no longer needs an external modem. 

[bplaa.yai]

Thank you Dave for your detailed answer.
In fact, after your message, I managed to run the dev image in virtual box. It was running perfectly from the begining, I just had to setup the VM's serial port to connect it and do the initial network setup. Once it's done, I just have to ssh into it.
Regarding the lack of pci initialisation, well, it now looks obvious... I just should have searched the forum better before buying a (now) useless wlan pci card. I just bought a pcmcia/pci bridge card, and it seems to run fine. In my pile of unused pcmcia wlan adapters, I'm trying to get the WG511 working. Unfortunately it's the "made in china" model, for which the firmware do not load.
Now I'm trying to compile ndiswrapper to get the card working, but that's another story...

[bplaa.yai]

Just made ndiswrapper working, and realized that ndiswrapper does not support master mode... I'm definitly not used with wlan under linux !
Well, I just have to find a pcmcia card with a supported chipset now...

[Davesworld]

I'll make an updated devel image, it's really just a matter of using a custom rootfiles config. It was pure dumb luck that it booted in VMWare because the stock kernel, namely the modules, have to be left in for installation.

[Davesworld]

I have a 1.4.21 development environment build I'll upload as soon as I get home tonight from work. I went ahead and used our Raqcop gui and the lcd instead of showing bandwidth by default shows uptime and load since you should definitely not use this to pass traffic but to compile on and experiment.

The trick was  coming up with the right rootfiles that would include the kernel source, compilers and all that from the build process into the install cd but not all the left over stuff from compiling the actual programs. I also had to do a little bit with the build script to make sure the kernel source is clean and has the cobalt config file in it.

I realize that this is awfully late in the 1.4.21 cycle to come up with this since hopefully the 1.4.22/23 update pair will be out soon but I have a good working rootfiles now again (yeah, not sure what happened to the one from 2008) and it's pretty trivial to use this in the next version.

 

[bplaa.yai]

I have a 1.4.21 development environment build I'll upload as soon as I get home tonight from work.
[ ... ]
The trick was  coming up with the right rootfiles that would include the kernel source, compilers and all that from the build process into the install cd but not all the left over stuff from compiling the actual programs. I also had to do a little bit with the build script to make sure the kernel source is clean and has the cobalt config file in it.

Does that mean that the "dumb luck" that allowed me to boot the image in a VM shouldn't exist anymore in the updated dev environment ?

[Davesworld]

Nope, the stock IPCop kernel is still there along with it's modules since the installer needs those modules anyway. No real reason to remove it for anything other than a production non devel machine. You can still use it headless in a non Cobalt machine.

BTW, I'm uploading the VMWare image right now, it's over 700MB and I'm upping over sftp so it'll be another three hours. The CDrom if you want to install to VMWare is already uploaded. At least now you can actually compile for the 2.4.36-cobalt kernel that is in 1.4.21. The old version you were using is 1.4.18 with a 2.4.34 kernel. I renamed the old vmware image and the cd to refer to Raqcop rather than IPCop so that a casual stumbler doesn't think it's a regular IPCop iso.