Re: Fedora 5 - Intel Pro/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI adapter woes.

Hi Davide.
Thanks for the response.

The Wireless is activated on the laptop but I'm not sure whether the
correct Drivers or Firmware are loaded.

I've downloaded the appropriate packages but I'm not confident enough
to know whether what I'm attempting to do is correct or not.

An attempt to follow this guide ... :

-------------------------- START GUIDE QUOTE
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Guide to install the Intel PRO Wireless 2100 Driver for Linux

Taken from:

http://jrblevin.freeshell.org/linux/ipw2100/

1. Introduction

This is a short guide to install the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Driver for
Linux. The ipw2100 project, created by Intel, provides support for the
PRO/Wireless 2100 mini PCI adapter found in many Centrino based
systems. Parts of this mini-HOWTO are specific to a fresh installation
of Fedora Core 2 on a standard i386 system but these steps should
translate to other distributions quite easily. I have also appended a
section at the end which is specific to Debian systems.

Note: At the time of the first draft of this HOWTO, ipw2100 was at
version 0.45 and still required hostap but more recent versions have
dropped this dependency. Most of the steps below were written as of
version 0.45 but the Debian section is current as of version 0.60 which
does not require hostap.

2. Preliminary Checks

There are a few dependencies to check before installing the driver.
According to the ipw2100 documentation:

In order to use the ipw2100 driver you will need the following:

1. hostap-driver-0.1.3 (for WEP {encryption)

2. Linux (of course) with a 2.4.23+ or 2.6.1+ kernel

3. Wireless Extensions (v16) and Tools (v27)

4. The ipw2100 driver.

5. The ipw2100 binary firmware image.

Fedora Core 2 ships with the 2.6.5 kernel which includes the wireless
extensions, and the wireless-tools package should be installed by
default. If you want to make sure you have everything you need, confirm
that you have wireless-tools, hotplug, and pcmcia-cs installed:

[jrblevin@syd jrblevin]$ rpm -q hotplug pcmcia-cs wireless-tools
hotplug-2004_04_01-1
pcmcia-cs-3.2.7-1.5
wireless-tools-26-4

If you issue the above command and all three packages are listed, you
should have everything you need to begin.

3. Install hostap-driver
Download the hostap-driver source code at http://hostap.epitest.fi/ As
of this writing, the latest version was 0.1.3.

Extract the source code:

$ tar xzvf hostap-driver-0.1.3.tar.gz
$ cd hostap-driver-0.1.3
Follow the instructions for "Systems using kernel tree PCMCIA modules"
in the README file.

Edit the Makefile to point to the kernel module build directory. For a
normal Fedora Core 2 install, change the line

KERNEL_PATH=/usr/src/linux
to

KERNEL_PATH=/lib/modules/2.6.5-1.358/build/
Compile and install the modules:

$ make
$ su
# make install

4. Install ipw2100

Download the source code at http://ipw2100.sf.net and uncompress it
into a temporary directory:

% tar zxvf ipw2100-0.45.tgz
% cd ipw2100-0.45
Follow the "BUILDING EXTERNAL" section in the ipw2100 INSTALL file:

% make HOSTAP=/path/to/hostap-driver-0.1.3
In my case this was /home/jrblevin/src/hostap-driver-0.1.3.

Then install the modules:

$ su
# make HOSTAP=/home/jrblevin/src/hostap-driver-0.1.3 install

5. Install the firmware

Download the firwmare corresponding to your version of ipw2100 and
uncompress it to a temporary directory. [Link]

[jrblevin@syd jrblevin]$ unzip 96377_96377.zip
Archive: 96377_96377.zip
inflating: LICENSE
inflating: ipw2100-1.1-p.fw
inflating: ipw2100-1.1-i.fw
inflating: ipw2100-1.1.fw
The firmware must be placed in /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware:

[jrblevin@syd jrblevin]$ su
Password:
[root@syd jrblevin]# mkdir -p /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/
[root@syd jrblevin]# cp ipw2100-1.1-p.fw ipw2100-1.1-i.fw
ipw2100-1.1.fw /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/
Note [2005.05.28]: In Fedora Core 4 Test 2 (and presumably all versions
thereafter) the firmware should be placed in /etc/firmware instead.
Thanks to Robert Williams for pointing this out on Bugzilla.

6. Loading the module
Load the module with

[root@syd ipw2100-0.45]# modprobe ipw2100

Then check the output of dmesg to see if it was successful. If so you
should see something like the following:

[root@syd ipw2100-0.45]# dmesg | tail
ipw2100: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Driver, 0.45
ipw2100: Copyright(c) 2003-2004 Intel Corporation
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth1
Detected ipw2100 PCI device at 0000:02:0b.0, dev: eth1, mem:
0xD0201000-0xD0201FFF -> 229c4000, irq: 9
eth1: Using hotplug firmware load.
ipw2100: Associated with '22cshepherd' at 11Mbps, channel 6
[root@syd ipw2100-0.45]#
This shows that the wireless card is on eth1, the firmware was loaded,
and a wireless access point was found. You can now configure the device
for your distribution. This is described in the INSTALL file in the
section titled "LOADING THE DRIVER." On Fedora Core 2, you can use
system-config-network.
--------------------------- END GUIDE QUOTE
---------------------------------------------------------------------
..
... Leaves me more confused than ever. :-(

I ran a modprobe ipw2100 from a root command prompt but nothing obvious
happened.
The cursor remained stationary but flashing and no further output was
shown on the screen.
I waited several minutes but to no further avail.

I then ran a dmesg as suggested and got the following output therein
which, I think, pertains to my WiFi card:

dmesg output pertaining to WiFi card


ieee80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
ieee80211: 802.11 data/management/control stack, git-1.1.7
ieee80211: Copyright (C) 2004-2005 Intel Corporation
<jketreno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
ipw2100: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Driver, 1.1.3
ipw2100: Copyright(c) 2003-2005 Intel Corporation
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.27
intel8x0_measure_ac97_clock: measured 55386 usecs
intel8x0: clocking to 48000

ipw2100: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Connection
cs: IO port probe 0x3d4-0x4ff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x3c0-0x3d2: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x100-0x3af: excluding 0x140-0x14f 0x200-0x20f
0x378-0x37f
cs: IO port probe 0xc00-0xcff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x800-0x8ff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0xa00-0xaff: clean.
ieee1394: Initialized config rom entry `ip1394'
USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.3
ipw2100: eth0: Firmware 'ipw2100-1.3.fw' not available or load failed.
ipw2100: eth0: ipw2100_get_firmware failed: -2
ipw2100: eth0: Failed to power on the adapter.
ipw2100: eth0: Failed to start the firmware.
ipw2100Error calling register_netdev.
ipw2100: probe of 0000:02:02.0 failed with error -5

It looks as if there are errors reported in here but I fear, being the
Linux novice I am, their import is beyond me.

If you could demystify any of this for me, I'd be most obliged once
more.

Thanks again.

Kush.


Davide Bianchi wrote:
On 2006-10-24, Kushty <kushty@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
to be OK apart from the WiFi card being recognised / functioning
correctly.

The Intel 2100/2200 require a bit of firmware that need to be loaded
at run time, AFAIK such firmware isn't distributed with any linux
distributions (it wasn't with mine), check in dmesh if the module load
correctly or gives you the 'can't load firmware' error, if so, maybe you
need to install the firmware.

A simple test, is to manually unload the driver with rmmod and then
load it again with modprobe, this should immediately tell you if you
have all the required bits or not.

Also, some laptops need to manually 'activate' the wi-fi hardware, some
of them have a phisical switch, some have a 'software' switch, maybe you
need to enable it.

Davide

--
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas
I'll never know.
-- Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx)

.

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