Uwe Hermann | A slightly paranoid Debian developer

I have upgraded my kernel to Linux 2.6.16 today with some consequences:

• The "SysKonnect Yukon2 support (EXPERIMENTAL)" option supports my network card just fine now, no need for external sk98lin drivers anymore (gah, I bet this URL will break in a few hours). For googling purposes: I have the following card: Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8036 Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 10).
• As I have reported before, my disk drive cannot be talked into using DMA without this kernel patch. The patch does not apply to 2.6.16 anymore, so I have fixed it. May I present: my first Linux kernel patch (IIRC), sent off to the LKML today. Let's see if this gets in the kernel...
• The kernel now includes the ipw2200 driver (not the most recent version, though), which allows me to use my Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG wireless network card without having to use external drivers. However, the driver does not allow you to put the card into monitor mode. The code is there, it just isn't enabled, for whatever reason. I have created a trivial patch, but it seems that someone else has already fixed this issue. Just in case anyone cares, here's my patch:

  diff -Naur linux-2.6.16.orig/drivers/net/wireless/ipw2200.c linux-2.6.16/drivers/net/wireless/ipw2200.c
  --- linux-2.6.16.orig/drivers/net/wireless/ipw2200.c    2006-03-20 06:53:29.000000000 +0100
  +++ linux-2.6.16/drivers/net/wireless/ipw2200.c 2006-03-24 01:27:15.000000000 +0100
  @@ -38,6 +38,9 @@
   #define DRV_COPYRIGHT  "Copyright(c) 2003-2005 Intel Corporation"
   #define DRV_VERSION     IPW2200_VERSION
  
  +#define CONFIG_IPW2200_MONITOR "y"
  +
  +
   #define ETH_P_80211_STATS (ETH_P_80211_RAW + 1)
  
   MODULE_DESCRIPTION(DRV_DESCRIPTION);
  

  You should better copy+paste the patch from the HTML source or it might break...

• There doesn't seem to be a loop-aes patch for 2.6.16, so I probably cannot mount my encrypted volumes. I'll try the latest release (for 2.6.15-*) tomorrow, if I'm lucky the patches still apply to 2.6.16...
• If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, you need this cumulative patch against the 1.0-8178 NVIDIA Linux x86 drivers, or else they won't compile.

Update 2006-03-24: The loop-aes v3.1c patches apply just fine. I almost forgot to mention the NVIDIA changes...

I intended to write up some sort of HOWTO for using the Toshiba Satellite A80-117 with Debian GNU/Linux for quite some time now, but I don't seem to get around to really finish it. So for now, I'll just release some quick hints about how to get everything working — I'll cover more details and stuff as soon as time permits.

Please consider this a draft and let me know if you have any comments.