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

[Paul Johnson]

On 6/29/07, David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> wrote:
> 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, and there's no way around
> it, so I installed FC6.  But with FC6, I can't get the ipw3945 wireless
> working.  I can't catch a break!
>
> There seems to be several ways: the iwl* packages, the ipw* packages,
> with or without Network Manager...
>
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.

Second, turn off NetworkManager, at least temporarily.

/sbin/service NetworkManager stop

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.

If it says there is no device, it means the module did not load.  Load
it manually after making sure the iwl3945 and mac80211 modules are no
longer loaded. (use /sbin/lsmod to see them and  /sbin/rmmod to get
rid of them)

/sbin/modprobe ipw3945

THen try to start the daemon again.

Then type /sbin/iwlist scan to see if there are wireless routers
around.  If there are, run

system-config-network

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

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

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

pj


> So scanning the internets and this list, this is what I have now:
> [root at lexa ~]# uname -a
> Linux lexa.thekramers.net 2.6.20-1.2962.fc6 #1 SMP
> Tue Jun 19 19:27:14    EDT 2007 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
>
> [root at lexa ~]# rpm -qa | egrep '(3945|ieee)'
> ipw3945d-1.7.22-4.at
> ipw3945-1.2.0-18.3.fc6
> ipw3945-kmdl-2.6.20-1.2962.fc6-1.2.0-18.3.fc6
> ipw3945-ucode-1.14.2-4.at
> ieee80211-kmdl-2.6.20-1.2962.fc6-1.2.16-18.fc6
> ieee80211-1.2.16-18.fc6
> libieee1284-0.2.9-3.2.2
>
> [root at lexa ~]# lsmod | egrep '(3945|ieee)'
> ipw3945               180000  1
> ieee80211              46188  1 ipw3945
> ieee80211_crypt         9216  1 ieee80211
> ieee1394              294681  1 ohci1394
>
> [root at lexa ~]# ps -e | egrep '(3945|ieee)'
>   3672 ?        00:00:00 ipw3945/0
>   3674 ?        00:00:00 ipw3945/1
>   3675 ?        00:00:00 ipw3945/0
>   3676 ?        00:00:00 ipw3945/1
>   3685 pts/2    00:00:00 ipw3945d
>
> [root at lexa ~]# egrep '(3945|ieee)' /etc/modprobe.conf
> alias eth1 ipw3945
> install ipw3945 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ipw3945 ;
>    sleep 0.5 ; /sbin/ipw3945d --timeout=2
> remove ipw3945 /sbin/ipw3945d --kill ;
>    /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove ipw3945
>
> [root at lexa ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1
> # Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
> # for the documentation of these parameters.
> TYPE=Wireless
> DEVICE=eth1
> HWADDR=00:1b:77:2c:64:c4
> BOOTPROTO=dhcp
> NETMASK=
> DHCP_HOSTNAME=lexa.thekramers.net
> IPADDR=
> DOMAIN=
> ONBOOT=no
> USERCTL=yes
> IPV6INIT=no
> PEERDNS=yes
> ESSID=DONTPANIC
> MODE=Managed
> RATE='36 Mb/s'
> CHANNEL=1
>
> "iwconfig eth1" and "iwlist eth1 scanning" both produce good-looking
> results, but the WiFi light is flashing very quickly, and "ifconfig eth1
> up" doesn't get an IP address, nor does "dhclient eth1", which just
> keeps trying.
>
>
> So what am I doing wrong?
> What does the fast blinking WiFi lite mean?
> What's the difference between the iwp* packages and the iwl* packages?
>
> Thanks.  I hope I included enough information.  I'm pretty desperate at
> this point.  This is an expensive laptop!
>
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-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas