[SOLVED] Intel Pro/Wireless 2915ABG

[ArtVandelay]

Hey everyone,

I'm having trouble getting the aforementioned wireless
adapter to work on my laptop, running the FC3 distro.

After getting some dependency hell via the RPMs, I decided
to just install the old fashioned way, as per
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2005-March/msg02740.html

Which is more or less what they describe at sourceforge
as well: make, make install, then put the supplied firmware
image files into the /lib/firmware directory.

First possible issue:
-during the make, I get a warning:
could not find versions for .tmp_versions/ipw2200.mod

a similar warning occurs during "make install" as well.

Ignoring the warnings, I put the firmware files in the firmware directory, then do: /sbin/modprobe ipw2200
which takes awhile, but does finish.

Then I do dmesg and see the errors shown are:

ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
ipw2200: ipw-2.2-boot.fw load failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: 0xFFFFFFFE
divert: freeing divert_blk for eth0
ipw2200: failed to register network device
ipw2200: probe of 0000:06:04.0 failed with error -5


If anyone has a clue or has run into this before,
let me know.

Thanks,

A

[ArtVandelay]

OK, I just rm-ed all the firmware files from
/lib/firmware

and I am getting the same message from dmesg,
which I guess means that this wasn't the right place
to put the firmware in the first place.

Anyone know where it actually goes, or if my
guess is correct?

[Icarus]

What is the 2915ABG? Is it supported by the ipw2200 drivers?

Have you read through the INSTALL doc from the site?
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/

[ArtVandelay]

The 2915ABG is a new intel wireless adapter for notebooks, and yes, it is supported by the ipw2200
drivers. Intel's 2915ABG driver downloads web page
had a tar of the same firmware images and source
that are on that sourceforge page.

The link you gave me is exactly the same as
the INSTALL text file that gets unpacked from the
afformentioned tar.

I did indeed follow those directions. The two iffy parts
were the warning that happened during the make
and putting the firmware in the right directory.

In their own words:


Once you have the firmware, unzip the archive. You should find five
files within it:

LICENSE A copy of the firmware license
ipw-2.2-boot.fw Boot strap image
ipw-2.2-bss_ucode.fw Used in BSS mode
ipw-2.2-bss.fw Used in BSS mode
ipw-2.2-ibss_ucode.fw Used in BSS mode
ipw-2.2-ibss.fw Used in BSS mode

You need to place all of these files into the hotplug
firmware directory (typically /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/ --
check the contents of the /etc/hotplug/firmware.agent to
determine the specific location for your distribution)



In my own /etc/hotplug/firmware.agent,
(This is on Fedora Core 3, by the way) there is this:


#directory of the firmware files
FIRMWARE_DIR=/lib/firmware


So as per my interpretation of the instructions, I
put the firmware files in /lib/firmware

After modprobing, I continually got the message
I showed above from dmesg and noted that I
got this same error message if I just rm-ed the
firmware files from /lib/firmware, which seems
to suggest to me that this isn't the right directory
to put the files, or hotplugging isn't working.

Oh, and
http://www.toshikazu.org/archives/2004_12.html
Looked promising, and the only web page that
specifically mentioned the 2915ABG on FC3,
but it is in what I'm guessing is Japanese so I can't
read it.

[ArtVandelay]

I finally found a site where the exact adapter was being
used on fedora 3, and was in English:

http://www.cybergarage.org/blog/2005/03/vaio-typef-i-installed-fedora-core3-to.html

I did exactly what this guy did, and used the EXACT same
files as he did for both the source and the firmware.
(ie. ipw2200-1.0.1.tgz as opposed to ipw2200-1.0.0.tgz)

As far as I know, I had done this before, but possibly
with older or newer versions. (I got the same
compile warning this time as well)

Another thing I did different is after rebooting, and seeing, what I think was called the kudzu hardware
detector, I managed to catch it on time, before the
countdown, and pressed "configure" and told it to get an
address by dhcp.

dmesg didn't give any of the errors this time.

Luckily I had added the mac address to my router's list.
Seeing google come up in firefox was the most
beautiful thing, ever! (maybe I need to get out more)

Is there going to be any weirdness if I take the laptop
to school and try and get on their wireless network?

I'm going to follow that same sites advice to get
nvidia happening, so I can start coding bad openGL
on the go.

[Icarus]

you shouldn't have any more problems now that you have it working.
Learn the wireless-tools you should have no problems to join any network you are allowed to (and some you are not ;))

I think they are even now working on geting 256bit encryption working so you should be fine :)