[hsflinux] HSF driver with kernel 2.6.8.1

[Dave Driver]

Linuxant support (Jonathan) wrote:
 > Hi,
 >
 > please make sure that you are using the driver package we offer on our
 > web site at :
 >
 > http://www.linuxant.com/drivers/hsf/full/downloads.php
 >
 > If with this package you still have problems, please send us the output
 > of 'dumpdiag'. Type the following in a root shell:
 >
 > ---
 > hsfconfig --dumpdiag --noprobe
 > ---
 >
 > Just send us the generated file located in /tmp ('hsfdiag.txt').
 > It'll help us solve the problem.
 >
 > Regards,
 >
 >
 > Jonathan
 > Technical specialist / Linuxant
 > www.linuxant.com
 > support at linuxant.com
 >

I think I finally know what the problem is, at least in my case. Oddly 
enough, the problem isn't directly with the Linuxant driver, more of a 
problem with my distro, (Gentoo) and probably several others.

After running hsfconfig for the first time, the modem works. All the 
modules load correctly. This is good until after the next reboot. Then 
on accessing the modem the system goes screwy and tries to load the 
modules over and over again, in an alias loop caused by the fragile 
contents of /etc/modprobe.conf. However, modprobe.conf on my system 
isn't the same as when it was first configured by hsfconfig, and here 
lies the problem. During each boot, the /etc/init.d/modules script runs 
modules-update. Now I don't think it ought to be doing this for a 2.6.x 
system, since modules-update is a 2.4 function. It updates modules.conf 
from the contents of the files in modules.d. It also calls another 
script that converts modules.conf to modprobe.conf, and this puts a lot 
of extra hsf stuff in that isn't meant to be there. I believe that this 
conversion from modules.conf to modprobe.conf should only be done once 
ever, at the time you upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6.

So my fix is to edit the file /etc/init.d/modules, and comment out the 
line that runs modules-update. After that it will work fine.

I'm not sure that I agree with the concept of forcing all the hardware 
modules to load on all systems. If I have a system with a PCI modem, I 
don't see why I should load up the hsfmc97ich, hsfmc97via, hsfmc97ali, 
and hsfusbcd2 modules. There's room for improvement here Linuxant.

Any comments from Linuxant Support?

 >
 > Igor GomeZZ wrote:
 >
 >>
 >>         Hello all...
 >>
 >>         I used the old driver (hsflinmodem-5.03.27.tar.gz) with my old
 >> kernel (2.4) with success.
 >>
 >>         But now, with kernel 2.6.8.1 and the newest driver, I'm having
 >> problems. When I type "hsfconfig" in terminal, my system crash.
 >>
 >>         Anyone have success with this kernel and this driver?
 >>
 >>         Thanks