Re: at76c503a crashes on 2.6.21.3

Hi Pavel,

My WUSB11 works perfectly now (on 2.6.21.3), so
MANY SINCERE THANKS to you, Joerg, other developers
and anybody who stood by me during these trying times.
----
Now for a couple of odds & ends, more or less interesting, more or less pleasant.

1. Alex wrote:
>> []$ iwconfig
>> ...
>>  Warning: Driver for device eth1 has been compiled with version 22
>>  of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 20.
>>  Some things may be broken...
>> ...
>> Despite my best attempts (maybe not good enough, though) I haven't yet
>> managed to iwconfig the device to the point where the wireless gets
>> off the ground.
>> What should I do next?

Pavel wrote:
> I believe all common stuff should be OK.
> Support for wireless extensions 21 and 22 is only present
> in pre-releases of Wireless Tools. ...
> You'll need 29-pre21beta for v21 and v22 support.

I cannot produce hard evidence one way or another;
I feel that despite numerous and arduous attempts,
I was able to set up the WUSB11 connectivity
(rather quickly and painlessly) only _after_ 
I installed 'wireless_tools.29.pre21', per your suggestion
(which eliminated the ominous Warning above as well).

2. It's going to be a little heavy, but I'll reproduce Pavel's "recommendations" section in its entirety, for easy reference on a few of my comments:

Start of Section
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On 2007/06/06 Wed PM 11:45:50 EDT Pavel Roskin wrote in answer to
what, on Wed, 2007-06-06 at 21:56 -0500, [email protected] wrote:

Alex:
> Unfortunately, I might have run into another problem - 
> now that the driver loads successfully.

Pavel:
Please be more specific.  A good problem report should include what you
are trying to achieve, what you are doing and what you are getting.
Neither seems to be described well.

Please avoid non-technical terms (like "gets off the ground") unless you
are absolutely sure that everybody understands what you mean.

If you need general help with wireless networking, it's probably a wrong
list.  I'm sure there are good resources about Linux wireless on the
web.

Alex:
> In case I haven't exhausted all the possibilities and it has something
> to do with the unsettling warning,

You didn't describe a single command.

If the problem is generic, I suggest doing some search first, maybe
finding a more generic list.  Still, you'll need to post the details,
not just that you "exhausted all the possibilities".
End of Section
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2a. In reference to the last paragraph, there's a misinterpretation somewhere.
I said "In case I haven't exhausted ..." which clearly implies
- my awareness of the _possibility_ that there might be other ways I hadn't explored
- a trace of humility on my part that I might be wrong despite all the evidence to the contrary!

So let's write this off to "false alert", shall we?.

2b. There seems to be a slight impression that I've been into "problem reports" here (in the sense of "bug" submissions).
FWIW, to clarify my intentions I'll make a few comments:
If one looks closely, all my thread turns out to have dealt with mismanagement, not problems/bugs.
Bugs can happen in the best families, and we all know Linux programmers/developers are among the best, most enthusiastic and generous.
I don't see a problem here.
The real _problem_ has always been "mismanagement", as they say in corporate circles.
A few specific examples from this thread (which should be clearly taken as _constructive_ criticisms and presented with a smile on my face):

2b1.  I started the thread after an eternity, so to speak, of banging my head against the compile-averse v13 driver.
Joerg could've spared a lot of inconvenience to _himself_ first and to others by adding a simple line on his download site to the effect that the victim
should join a user-list first and _then_, maybe, write to his prominently displayed address directly (and only with personal matters, I suppose - He never answered my original mail on the v13 compile issue).
It might also help a little mention that there just might be some other folks hanging around updating and keeping his excellent original work in sync with all the kernel iterations, etc.

2b2.  Your reply (super helpful, as I said repeatedly) was presented in a caj-like manner (hey, didn't you know there's a driver around, to get you out
of your misery?) instead of being properly published somewhere to avoid somebody else falling into the same trap.

2b3.  The approach above also wrongly conditions the victim to expect that - if she knows anything about computers at all - on "honest" failure to expect another fix floating around and not to blame herself unnecessarily and/or foolishly press to the bitter end.
This is why this time I stopped my futile attempts to set up the driver while a "Message" like that was hovering above my head and asked for help as soon as I could ("help", in the sense, hey, where's the fix? Not what I did wrong or missed).
I guessed (rightly) that somehow, somewhere, a good Samaritan will find a "pre", a "beta", something, lying somewhere for me.  I didn't care about what I did technically (and nobody should either, in this situation); I knew I had a chance!
You came through for me again (again, caj-like - that's fine, no problem with _me_ though).
Obviously there must be something wrong in all this when for the same person, setting up the friggin' thing on Windows takes a minute or so (especially after its having been around for years).
This whole process can clearly be managed (NOT programmed) better with a lot less pain to the user.

All in all, there's a happy ending after all and we should all rejoice and be thankful.

Thank you very much.
Best wishes,
-- Alex

PS Sorry about "gets off the ground"
I meant "where the wireless starts flying" :-)