WiFi prolem with Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection (rev 05)

__spc__ · 08-31-2008, 08:58 AM

Hi,

First, I've trawled through as many threads on this as I can find, and am still no further to resolveing the issue, so here goes a post of my own.

I have a laptop with the Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection (rev 05) WiFi card, and support for this is compiled in to the kernel. 'lspci':

Code:

02:04.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection (rev 05)

Looking at dmesg, there seems to be an issue with the firmware:

Code:

ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.2kmprq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [C0C6] enabled at IRQ 11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:04.0[A] -> Link [C0C6] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
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
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:02:04.0 disabled
ipw2200: probe of 0000:02:04.0 failed with error -5

Now, has anyone else experienced this problem and solved it successfully. I've downloaded all the various firmwares, but am a) unsure of which version I need, and b) actually how to get the firmware recognised.

Any help much appreciated....

irishbitte · 08-31-2008, 11:04 AM

Take a look at this:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ke...ry/032254.html

It may reference your issue, i'm not sure. As you can see, it is for kernel image linux-image-2.6.24-3. This is slightly older than yours.

Hope that helps.

__spc__ · 08-31-2008, 03:31 PM

Thanks for that, still no joy though.

I'm sure I have v1.2.2 so need firmware 3. The firmware files are in /lib/firmware but still the error message...

Surely someone must have this network card working..?

10SPlayer · 09-01-2008, 03:00 PM

Though I have not been able to get my card to work since it doesn't have WPA support off the bat, but there is a solution to your issue.. I did 2 things but am not sure if both are necessary.

First thing to try is to mount /sys directory in your fstab entry. The ipw2200-bss.fw is sitting in the sys folder.

From ipw2200 driver INSTALL.txt file

Quote:

6. SYSFS
-----------------------------------------------

You will also need to have sysfs mounted. This facility is used to query
and control the operation of the ipw2200 driver (see the README.ipw2200,
found in the ipw2200 source directory).

You can mount sysfs this by adding an entry to /etc/fstab similar to this:

none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0

If the directory /sys does not already exist, you will need to create it:

% mkdir /sys

You can then mount the sysfs partition via:

% mount -a

Second thing may be to increase the firmware timeout time value set in /sys/class/firmware/timeout using the following command (from ipw2200 page):[HTML]http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/index.php[/HTML]
echo 100 > /sys/class/firmware/timeout

I believe the first should fix it, since the second also relies on the fact that /sys folder is mounted. If the directory is mounted upon boot, it should allow your wireless to operate if the first option is applied.

jlinkels · 09-01-2008, 03:20 PM

Try this in a console as root, after you booted your system and all drivers etc are loaded:

Code:

rmmod ipw2200
modprobe ipw2200
/etc/init.d/networking restart

If this works, live with it. I have seen the solution of increasing the timeout in the firmware as proposed by 10Splayer as well, but it didn't work for me. I gave up the hope finding the solution, except for this workaround.

Edit: In Slackware there might be another way to restart you network. This is Debian, but I am sure you are able to find out how to do that in Slack.

jlinkels

__spc__ · 09-02-2008, 01:26 PM

@jlinkels
I don't use modules -I have support compiled into the kernel.

@10SPlayer
I currently have the firmware in /lib/firmware.

/sys sysfs is already mounted using fstab.

Code:

root@Laptop:/# mount -a
mount: devpts already mounted or /dev/pts busy
mount: none already mounted or /sys busy
mount: according to mtab, sysfs is already mounted on /sys
root@Laptop:/#

If I try to copy the firmware to /sys/firmware I get:

Code:

root@Laptop:/sys/firmware# cp ~/ipw2200-fw-3.0/* ./
cp: cannot create regular file `./LICENSE.ipw2200-fw': No such file or directory
cp: cannot create regular file `./ipw2200-bss.fw': No such file or directory
cp: cannot create regular file `./ipw2200-ibss.fw': No such file or directory
cp: cannot create regular file `./ipw2200-sniffer.fw': No such file or directory
root@Laptop:/sys/firmware#

Any ideas - I'm close, I can smell it!

__spc__ · 09-03-2008, 02:13 PM

Solved!

Un-compile built-in kernel support for the driver, and compile driver support in the kernel as a module, instead.

Now I just need to get the wireless configured properly - starting with having a 'wlan0' (rather than the 'eth0' it chooses)...

irishbitte · 09-05-2008, 04:11 PM

Fair dues!

flaferriere · 10-11-2008, 09:51 AM

I have exactly the same problem with the same wifi card

I am impressed

How do you uncompile and compile driver support in the kernel?
where is the configuration file for wireless?

many thanks in advance

Quote:

Originally Posted by __spc__

Solved!

Un-compile built-in kernel support for the driver, and compile driver support in the kernel as a module, instead.

Now I just need to get the wireless configured properly - starting with having a 'wlan0' (rather than the 'eth0' it chooses)...