Hey, I'm new to Debian. Been using Ubuntu for a while, but wanted a little change so I installed the latest Etch.

It didn't seem to find my wireless card:

# lspci | grep Network
01:03.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection (rev 05)

ifconfig shows only lo and eth1 which is my wired network card which works fine.

What can be wrong? How would I go about fixing this?

Please some assistance..

Edit: Might be worth mentioning that this card worked out-of-the-box on ubuntu dapper/edgy/feisty. And that now iwconfig gives me:
eth1 no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
sit0 no wireless extensions.

I've tried putting:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

in /etc/networking/interfaces and restarting network. Didn't work. I also tried "iwconfig eth0 essid My_Essid" but that gives me "Operation not supported". Seems like it thinks my wireless card is some kinda wired card. Can anyone please help me figure this out?

Hey,

I don't think you have the driver installed - I know on sarge that the ipw2200 driver didn't work out of the box, you had to install the .deb ipw2200 source and use module-assistant. I don't know whether this has changed on etch, so I suggest you do the following:

Edit: Actually just check lsmod to see if ipw2200 and iee802211 are already installed, if they are the driver is already loaded and you've got a different problem

1. Open synaptic and search for ipw2200, you should see a package called ipw2200-source. If its there install it, if it isn't already. Also make sure the ieee80211-source package is installed

2. At the terminal enter, as root (m-a = module-assistant):

$ m-a prepare
$ m-a

3. Then choose the select option, select the ieee80211 package and then select the build option and then install.

4. Go back to the driver select list and choose ipw2200 then select build and then install.

5. Do lsmod and you should see both ieee80211 and ipw2200 listed

6. You should then be able to configure the card with the gui or editing the /etc/network/interfaces file

Hopefully I remembered how to do it correctly,

Chris

Hi, thanks for answerring.

I ran lsmod | grep ipw and this is what shows up:

ipw2200 93824 0
ieee80211 29416 1 ipw2200
firmware_class 9600 1 ipw2200

Does this mean the module is installed, but not being used?
I tried modprobe ipw2200, but that didn't change anything.

Edit: I also ran through the m-a as you told me to and added, built and installed the module for ipw2200 without any visible errors. I then got a message a new update was ready and installed some ipw2200 module update. I really don't know what I'm doing here.. anyway..there's still the same in lsmod.

Yep that means that the modules are loaded into to kernel and should be working - so why aren't they????

At the terminal enter: dmesg
Check up and down it to see any mention of the ipw2200 module being loaded, if you get an error saying something like: "firmware not loaded, error -2"

Try removing all the modules with, as root:

modprobe -r ipw2200
modprobe -r ieee80211

then load the ipw2200 one only with

modprobe ipw2200

then again try

iwconfig

see if the are any wireless extensions now.

I assume you have must have the firmware in the /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware directory - check if it isn't there, try downloading a copy from the ipw2200 projects website and put it in the above directory

Chris.

I found this in dmesg:

ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.0mq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
ipw2200: failed to register network device
ipw2200: probe of 0000:01:03.0 failed with error -5
ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.0mq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
ipw2200: failed to register network device
ipw2200: probe of 0000:01:03.0 failed with error -5


So obviously something is wrong. There was nothing in that firmware directory, so I downloaded the tar.gz and extracted it to that directory and tried modprobe -r ipw2200 and modprobe ipw2200 again. Didnt work :/

Looks like somethings wrong with that firmware though.

Which firmware did you download because it has to match with the driver version.

Also did remove the ieee80211 module as well as the ipw2200 one?

Leave the firmware in the directory and reboot the machine. Without doing anything else open a terminal and enter iwconfig, if there are no wireless cards listed, remove both modules with modprobe -r. Make sure you remove in the order ipw2200 and then ieee80211, then reload the ipw2200 one only.

Then try, as root:

invoke-rc.d ifupdown restart

then

iwconfig

hopefully your'll have a wifi card detected

Chris

The firmware doesn't get installed in Etch by default even though the drivers are there. And it looks like your modules are fine.

Just download the firmware (I use version 3) from here: http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php

Then untar the file into /lib/firmware/ and reboot. You should see the wireless interface when it comes up.

Rik

Before using module-assistant and recompiling a new driver, it is wise to look at the currently installed driver.
I am using the built-in driver so I didn't use module-assistant. As you said, in sarge that was probably needed. In newer 2.6.x kernels, the delivered driver is fine.