ndiswrapper missing on the beta8 CDs
About the bug I posted bellow: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=160804 It has been closed with the following comment: [Andreas Jaeger]: "We will not add it to our media, it will be available via ftp only." Can I have a "why" on that? I can't see the logics here. I didn't have a wired LAN available by the time of install, and it's not easy to get one, so you mean I'm forced to use floppies, usb sticks, or whatever other way I could get to download the packages somewhere else and install them on my machine? Yes, I fail to see the logics here. So you're simply stating that I can't have network connection because my wlan card isn't natively supported by the kernel? See, I would accept if you say it's a license problem with ndiswrapper (which I think isn't), but simply saying "we will not" isn't a polite answer. Oh, BTW, the ndiswrapper on factory doesn't match ther kernel installed by beta8 CDs, so I can't even use it, unless I switch my kernel too. -- % Mauricio Teixeira (netmask) % mteixeira{a}webset{d}net <> Maceio/AL/BR % http://mteixeira.webset.net <> http://pmping.sf.net
Mauricio Teixeira (netmask) wrote:
About the bug I posted bellow:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=160804
It has been closed with the following comment:
[Andreas Jaeger]: "We will not add it to our media, it will be available via ftp only."
Can I have a "why" on that? I can't see the logics here. I didn't have a wired LAN available by the time of install, and it's not easy to get one, so you mean I'm forced to use floppies, usb sticks, or whatever other way I could get to download the packages somewhere else and install them on my machine?
Yes, I fail to see the logics here. So you're simply stating that I can't have network connection because my wlan card isn't natively supported by the kernel?
See, I would accept if you say it's a license problem with ndiswrapper (which I think isn't), but simply saying "we will not" isn't a polite answer.
Oh, BTW, the ndiswrapper on factory doesn't match ther kernel installed by beta8 CDs, so I can't even use it, unless I switch my kernel too.
Sometimes we just need to take into account the sheer number of non-native English speakers here. What Andreas meant to say most likely was: Novell/SUSE supports only HW configuration fulfilling at least one of the two conditions: Your wlan card works out of the box or you must have wired internet access. The real outcome is: ndiswrapper is not supported anymore since you might need it in order to have it. FMF
On Sun, 26 Mar 2006, Frank-Michael Fischer wrote:
Sometimes we just need to take into account the sheer number of non-native English speakers here. What Andreas meant to say most likely was: Novell/SUSE supports only HW configuration fulfilling at least one of the two conditions: Your wlan card works out of the box or you must have wired internet access. The real outcome is: ndiswrapper is not supported anymore since you might need it in order to have it.
ndiswrapper was never supported, and probably never will be supported by SUSE / Novell. It's simply impossible for our kernel developers to debug problems that might occur when loading windows binary-only drivers with ndiswrapper. Regards Christoph
On Sun, Mar 26, 2006 at 05:40:53PM +0200, Christoph Thiel wrote:
On Sun, 26 Mar 2006, Frank-Michael Fischer wrote:
Sometimes we just need to take into account the sheer number of non-native English speakers here. What Andreas meant to say most likely was: Novell/SUSE supports only HW configuration fulfilling at least one of the two conditions: Your wlan card works out of the box or you must have wired internet access. The real outcome is: ndiswrapper is not supported anymore since you might need it in order to have it.
ndiswrapper was never supported, and probably never will be supported by SUSE / Novell. It's simply impossible for our kernel developers to debug problems that might occur when loading windows binary-only drivers with ndiswrapper.
That absolutely does not explain why it got removed from the CDs. Ciao, Marcus
On Sun, 26 Mar 2006, Marcus Meissner wrote:
Sometimes we just need to take into account the sheer number of non-native English speakers here. What Andreas meant to say most likely was: Novell/SUSE supports only HW configuration fulfilling at least one of the two conditions: Your wlan card works out of the box or you must have wired internet access. The real outcome is: ndiswrapper is not supported anymore since you might need it in order to have it.
ndiswrapper was never supported, and probably never will be supported by SUSE / Novell. It's simply impossible for our kernel developers to debug problems that might occur when loading windows binary-only drivers with ndiswrapper.
That absolutely does not explain why it got removed from the CDs.
That's not what I was trying to explain. But my guess would be that it got removed due to the fact that we can't support it and it beeing disliked a lot by our kernel teams. At the end of the day it's AJ's decision. Regards Christoph
Christoph Thiel <cthiel@suse.de> writes:
That's not what I was trying to explain. But my guess would be that it got removed due to the fact that we can't support it and it beeing disliked a lot by our kernel teams. At the end of the day it's AJ's decision.
The kernel teams gave me a big veto and asked not to ship it on the media due to the fact that we cannot debug any issues when ndiswrapper is in use, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj/ SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 09:39:46AM +0200, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
Christoph Thiel <cthiel@suse.de> writes:
That's not what I was trying to explain. But my guess would be that it got removed due to the fact that we can't support it and it beeing disliked a lot by our kernel teams. At the end of the day it's AJ's decision.
The kernel teams gave me a big veto and asked not to ship it on the media due to the fact that we cannot debug any issues when ndiswrapper is in use,
What about the customers? ndiswrapper is the only (Novell seen) legal way to run Atheros Wireless and prism54 v3 cards (and probably some more). Why do I need Internet if I just need the SL CDs and the Windows Driver CD? Ciao, Marcus
Hello, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
The kernel teams gave me a big veto and asked not to ship it on the media due to the fact that we cannot debug any issues when ndiswrapper is in use,
Another idea: put ndiswrapper on the install media, as some people can't get Internet available without it, but also make a note of it at the 'installation support ' description (about page 254 in suse 10.0 startup guide) saying, that: "no support is available for ndiswrapper based network setups, and we can not provide kernel support either" Configuring ndiswrapper needs more technical knowledge anyway, than provided by the free installation support ;-) But lack of it can cause a lot of inconvenience for those who need it. Bye, -- CzP http://peter.czanik.hu/
Hey, I will be the first to admit that ndiswrapper is incredibly buggy, and that novell definitely shouldn't have to support it. However, I totally agree that it is a necessary piece of software for a linux distro, and that it is necessary to have it on a cd for people that need ndiswrapper to get in the internet. So please just include it, but with a message (also warning about the instability). You might as well display the message when people go to install it in YaST2, just like the messages when people go to install fortune or some proprietary packages. -----Original Message----- From: Peter Czanik [mailto:pczanik@fang.fa.gau.hu] Hello, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
The kernel teams gave me a big veto and asked not to ship it on the media due to the fact that we cannot debug any issues when ndiswrapper is in use,
Another idea: put ndiswrapper on the install media, as some people can't get Internet available without it, but also make a note of it at the 'installation support ' description (about page 254 in suse 10.0 startup guide) saying, that: "no support is available for ndiswrapper based network setups, and we can not provide kernel support either" Configuring ndiswrapper needs more technical knowledge anyway, than provided by the free installation support ;-) But lack of it can cause a lot of inconvenience for those who need it. Bye, -- CzP http://peter.czanik.hu/
"Michael DePaulo" <msd19@case.edu> writes:
Hey,
I will be the first to admit that ndiswrapper is incredibly buggy, and that novell definitely shouldn't have to support it.
However, I totally agree that it is a necessary piece of software for a linux distro, and that it is necessary to have it on a cd for people that need ndiswrapper to get in the internet.
So please just include it, but with a message (also warning about the instability). You might as well display the message when people go to install it in YaST2, just like the messages when people go to install fortune or some proprietary packages.
That sounds like an option, I'm adding now "No support is available for ndiswrapper based network setups, and we will not accept bug reports against the kernel if the ndiswrapper kernel module is loaded." Ok, packages will go on the media now, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj/ SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
On 27 Mar 2006 at 11:42, Andreas Jaeger wrote: [...]
That sounds like an option, I'm adding now "No support is available for ndiswrapper based network setups, and we will not accept bug reports against the kernel if the ndiswrapper kernel module is loaded."
If it's unloadable: "... is or was loaded in the running kernel". However you'll have a hard time proving it was loaded before any crash ;-) Regards, Ulrich
Hello, Ulrich Windl wrote:
If it's unloadable: "... is or was loaded in the running kernel". However you'll have a hard time proving it was loaded before any crash ;-)
If there was a crash, it can't be unloaded anyway. The first question from SUSE support is to provide: hwinfo --all :-) If the user asks with the module loaded, it will be seen. If he unloads it, he lies to himself, as he asks for support he actually does not use, and can't get the right answer for his situation. Bye, -- CzP http://peter.czanik.hu/
Ulrich Windl schrieb:
On 27 Mar 2006 at 11:42, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
[...]
That sounds like an option, I'm adding now "No support is available for ndiswrapper based network setups, and we will not accept bug reports against the kernel if the ndiswrapper kernel module is loaded."
If it's unloadable: "... is or was loaded in the running kernel". However you'll have a hard time proving it was loaded before any crash ;-)
IIRC it taints the kernel (in recent kernels only). Regards, Carl-Daniel
Andreas Jaeger wrote:
Ok, packages will go on the media now,
OH! Thank you! :) -- % Mauricio Teixeira (netmask) % mteixeira{a}webset{d}net <> Maceio/AL/BR % http://mteixeira.webset.net <> http://pmping.sf.net
Christoph Thiel wrote:
ndiswrapper was never supported, and probably never will be supported by SUSE / Novell. It's simply impossible for our kernel developers to debug
Ok. Let me get this straight: you mean *SUSE kernel developers* or *main kernel developers*? IMHO, SUSE doesn't have to care about it, considering you (the distro) get the module and the binary working and loading, the rest is with ndiswrapper developers. -- % Mauricio Teixeira (netmask) % mteixeira{a}webset{d}net <> Maceio/AL/BR % http://mteixeira.webset.net <> http://pmping.sf.net
Mauricio Teixeira schrieb:
Christoph Thiel wrote:
ndiswrapper was never supported, and probably never will be supported by SUSE / Novell. It's simply impossible for our kernel developers to debug
Ok. Let me get this straight: you mean *SUSE kernel developers* or *main kernel developers*?
Both.
IMHO, SUSE doesn't have to care about it, considering you (the distro) get the module and the binary working and loading, the rest is with ndiswrapper developers.
People will complain either way. If ndiswrapper works but crashes, people will say that Linux is unstable. If ndiswrapper is not shipped, people will say that Linux doesn't support their hardware. Crashes are obviously worse for the reputation of a distribution, so it makes very much sense to NOT support or encourage ndiswrapper. And most people are stubborn enough to insist that ndiswrapper is not the cause of their crashes and even falsely claim untainted kernels just to get support. This leads to loads of wasted time for SUSE and mainline kernel developers. Regards, Carl-Daniel -- http://www.hailfinger.org/
Frank-Michael Fischer wrote:
Sometimes we just need to take into account the sheer number of non-native English speakers here. What Andreas meant to say most likely
I can't see why it would make me misunderstand the issue. In fact, he didn't give a detailed explanation.
of the two conditions: Your wlan card works out of the box or you must have wired internet access. The real outcome is: ndiswrapper is not
IMHO it's a shame. So I shall be forced to buy some specific cards just because I can't have ndiswrapper on CD, although they work perfectly with it (ndiswrapper)? Since I can remember people work to have hardware supported, not simply drop it (unless they find problems with licenses, which is simply not the case). So the question remains. If I have WLAN only, no wired net, and I need ndiswrapper to make my net working, what should I do? It doesn't make sense. :) -- % Mauricio Teixeira (netmask) % mteixeira{a}webset{d}net <> Maceio/AL/BR % http://mteixeira.webset.net <> http://pmping.sf.net
Mauricio Teixeira schrieb:
Since I can remember people work to have hardware supported, not simply drop it (unless they find problems with licenses, which is simply not the case).
There is a license problem. Ndiswrapper is needed for certain (windows) closed source network drivers which cannot be legally inserted into a GPL kernel. So if you ship ndiswrapper, you encourage license violations. How do you intend to solve that problem? Regards, Carl-Daniel
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
There is a license problem. Ndiswrapper is needed for certain (windows) closed source network drivers which cannot be legally inserted into a GPL
I *may* be wrong, but in this case you're not violating any license because you OWN the hardware, and the software that comes with it. The issue about close vs GPL, is already solved, the same way as NVIDIA drivers. -- % Mauricio Teixeira (netmask) % mteixeira{a}webset{d}net <> Maceio/AL/BR % http://mteixeira.webset.net <> http://pmping.sf.net
On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 13:55 -0300, Mauricio Teixeira wrote:
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
There is a license problem. Ndiswrapper is needed for certain (windows) closed source network drivers which cannot be legally inserted into a GPL
I *may* be wrong, but in this case you're not violating any license because you OWN the hardware, and the software that comes with it.
You may own the hardware but not the software, it is only licenced for use with the hardware.
The issue about close vs GPL, is already solved, the same way as NVIDIA drivers.
I agree with this, works the same way as the NVidia and ATI drivers do. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998
On 29 Mar 2006 at 13:55, Mauricio Teixeira wrote:
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
There is a license problem. Ndiswrapper is needed for certain (windows) closed source network drivers which cannot be legally inserted into a GPL
I *may* be wrong, but in this case you're not violating any license because you OWN the hardware, and the software that comes with it.
You may OWN the hardware, but you don't really OWN the software. See the licence text that comes with it. If you'd own the software you could give out your own licenses for it.
The issue about close vs GPL, is already solved, the same way as NVIDIA drivers.
SuSE doesn't include these neither, or what? Regards, Ulrich
Mauricio Teixeira (netmask) wrote:
About the bug I posted bellow:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=160804
It has been closed with the following comment:
[Andreas Jaeger]: "We will not add it to our media, it will be available via ftp only."
Can I have a "why" on that? I can't see the logics here. I didn't have a wired LAN available by the time of install, and it's not easy to get one, so you mean I'm forced to use floppies, usb sticks, or whatever other way I could get to download the packages somewhere else and install them on my machine?
Yes, I fail to see the logics here. So you're simply stating that I can't have network connection because my wlan card isn't natively supported by the kernel?
See, I would accept if you say it's a license problem with ndiswrapper (which I think isn't), but simply saying "we will not" isn't a polite answer.
Oh, BTW, the ndiswrapper on factory doesn't match ther kernel installed by beta8 CDs, so I can't even use it, unless I switch my kernel too.
The WLAN strategy gets even more messy since (bug 148210) NetworkManager does support the fairly widespread prism54 chip through ndiswrapper only at present. So SUSE is aiming back to the good old rock-solid wired LAN, so it seems. Do not worry that bug 148210 has been declared fixed, it's just cosmetics for the time being: no fix has been submitted yet making ndiswrapper obsolete for prism54 support. FMF
participants (11)
-
Andreas Jaeger -
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger -
Christoph Thiel -
Frank-Michael Fischer -
Kenneth Schneider -
Marcus Meissner -
Mauricio Teixeira -
Mauricio Teixeira (netmask)
-
Michael DePaulo -
Peter Czanik -
Ulrich Windl