Description of problem: compat-wireless (http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Download) a way of using the latest wireless stack without building a whole new kernel, by replacing the whole of wireless stack - which is a bit smaller and easier/quicker to replace. Sometimes wireless-testing/compat-wireless needs to change mac80211, and this is impossible with fc10 kernels, because mac80211 is compiled-in. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.27.4-79.fc10.x86_64 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. build compat-wireless, 2. make install, make unload, make load 3. mysterious errors or even kernel oops happens. Actual results: mysterious errors or even kernel oops happens. Expected results: The wireless stack + drivers replaced by compat-wireless and have operational wireless networking Additional info: fc9 kernels (e.g. kernel-2.6.27.4-24.fc9.x86_64) have mac80211 as a kernel module. Probably should assign this to John Linville :-).
I looked through koji and found it was removed between 0.345.rc7.fc10 0.339.rc7.fc10 but the log entry between does not say why.
I advised against it for exactly this reason. The notion was that this would save time during boot and that anyone who could build compat-wireless could just build their own kernel anyway...whatever. I think it was the wrong decision.
lets move it back to modular then. There's always going to be trade-offs, and I think in this case, the benefits of a marginally slower boot are outweighed by the improved debugging you get.
compat-wireless is considerably easier and quicker to build; particularly in the situation where one wants to try out new changes (and easily revertable, just by blowing away /lib/module/<version>/updates and then depmod -a), without whole-sale dev kernel. As for slower boot, it is probably marginal compared to per-driver initialization - and some might argue in the opposite - not all machines have wireless cards.
2.6.27.5-88.fc10.x86_64 just available on koji has the mac80211 component as module. change log: * Wed Nov 05 2008 John W. Linville <linville> 2.6.27.4-83 - Re-modularize mac80211 component (#470143) Thank you!