FC6 ipw3945 on Dell D820 not working. What's the best way?

[David Kramer]

Brian Millett wrote:
 > David Kramer escribío:
>> SO I bought this brand new Dell Latitude D820. I've been trying to
>> get a fully working Linux install on it for weeks. I tried F7, but
>> the new suspend mechanism doesn't work on this laptop,
 >
> What BIOS rev do you have? On mine (d820), It suspends after I
 > upgraded it to A5.
> For F7 to suspend, see
> http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/quirk/
 > and do not use compiz/beryl.

My BIOS is A6 (from April), and it does not suspend.  I spent two whole 
nights trying different quirk options.  They never should have changed 
the power management software in the state it's in.

I hate that I have this brand new laptop and I have to run an older 
version of Fedora on it, but I've tried all I can try.  Hopefully Fedora 
8 will be better.

> I added the following init.d script to start ipw3945d at the correct 
> time BEFORE the NetworkManager starts. If the network comes up and
> the ipw3945d is not started, then the wireless is not activated.

Your script was very helpful.  Thanks.  More on that later


Paul Johnson wrote:
> Your experience is just like mine.  I've made both iwl and ipw drivers
> work.  I'd say for getting it going the first time, here's what you
> should do. Try ipw3945. That means in
> /etc/modules.d/blacklist, you need to add iwl3945 to make sure it does
> not load. If it doesn ipw won't work.

I uninstalled the iwl stuff.  Nothing I read explicitly said so, but my 
instincts told me they were mutually exclusive.

> Second, turn off NetworkManager, at least temporarily.
> /sbin/service NetworkManager stop

I never had it enabled.  What does it do?

> Third, Find out if the regulatory deamon runs.  If you type this and
> it is running, you should see this (pasted in)
> 
> # /sbin/ipw3945d
> ipw3945d - regulatory daemon
> Copyright (C) 2005-2006 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
> version: 1.7.22
> 2007-06-29 10:30:31: ERROR: ipw3945d already running.  If ipw3945d is
> not running then you
> need to remove '/var/run/ipw3945d.pid' and try again.

Got this problem fixed with Brian Millett's script.

> and go through the steps of setting up a new wireless device. The
> critical part is the last one, where you put in the wireless server's
> name and if you can, set the channel.  That gui has a way to activate
> it.  It is the same thing as /sbin/ifup eth1 that you were trying.  I
> suspect /sbin/ifup eth1 did not work for you before because the
> network scripts were not configured. You can study the output of that
> setup by reading the files it creates in
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts.   Look at ifcg-eth1.  That will be
> customized for the current access point.   To use others, I "cp
> ifcg-eth ifcfg-othersite" and then edit that file.  Leave the device
> as eth1, change the essid. after that, /sbin/ifup othersite does the
> trick.  

My old laptop is running SUSE.  They have a tool called SCPM, System 
Configuration Profile Manager, that lets you store and retrieve 
different config files for different environments.  I was wondering how 
you would do this in Fedora.  While I'm sure your suggestion isn't the 
official way it's supposed to be done, that sounds like it would work, 
and work well and predictably.  I'll bring it into work Monday and try that.

 > I have never had success with system-config-network when
> adding more wlreless points.  Don't bother.

I find system-config-network highly unpredictable.  It's the first 
Fedora program I learned to hate ;)

> If that works, then you can consider running NetworkManager again and
> launching the nm-applet to have a gui way to do this.

Likewise, the man pages for NetworkManager are about two paragraphs 
long.  I guess I'll have to just save all my config files and try it and 
  see what it does.

> Honestly, I've wasted many hours on this and I promise this is the
> best, most dependable way to get it started.  I think the secret was
> to blacklist iwl3945.  After I did that, everything worked 20000%
> better
> 
> I sincerely hope this helps

Yes.  Everything is working now.  But it took the hints posted on no 
less than three emails to get the whole picture.  In addiition to Paul's 
and Brian's suggestions, I found a third post from a related thread 
suggesting putting  "alias eth1 ipw3945" in /etc/modprobe.conf.  I never 
thought to check for that, because I couldn't imagine a scenario where 
the install didn't do that for me, but I guess I was wrongt.

Thank you both for your suggestions.  I would rather have gotten suspend 
working in F7 than revoert to FC6, but at least I have Fc6 working, and 
as soon as I migrate my configuration over from the old laptop, I might 
even have domestic tranquility again.