Hello there team,

I am new to linux. Managed to install Lenny on my Dell Latitude E6400.

It looks alright from outside. ie most of what I am looking for works. Ethernet is fine.

but I cant get the wireless up and running.
I ve managed to configure wpa_supplicant.conf file to reflect ssid and psk passwords etc..

but on running I get the following error. I've just typed an excerpt.

Initializing interface (2) 'wlan0'
ioctl[SIOCGIFFLAGS]:No such device
could not get interface 'wlan0' flags

.....

I've typed iwconfig

and I see
lo No wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.

could you please let us know whats wrong apart from the OS perhaps not identifying the wireless interface or drivers?

And how to debug or install the drivers?

thanks in advance for your time

cheers

According to linlap.com, support for the Intel 5100 wireless controller in the E6400 has only just made it into the 2.6.27 version of the kernel. Debian Lenny is running the previous kernel version.

You could try updating your kernel from backports.org (which has newer versions compiled to work with Lenny), so that you don't have to move to Debian testing. This means adding a backports line to your '/etc/apt/sources.list', and apt-get to grab the new kernel.

thanks very much for your reply, neonsignal.

sorry I wasnt clear in my earlier message.
I see this on kernel 2.6.30.4 which is my current kernel

Okay, if you are running a kernel that new, perhaps it is Debian Squeeze (testing).

I hadn't realized, but this Intel wireless card needs some proprietary firmware to be installed. This is included in a package called "firmware-iwlwifi". There are some instructions here. It isn't included by default in the distro because it is non-free software, but Intel have provided it in binary form for packaging.

The basic steps are to add the appropriate repositories, apt-get the firmware-iwlwifi package, and reboot (or use 'modprobe iwlagn') so that the driver module gets loaded.

If you have a look at "dmesg | more", you will be able to see if and when the wifi driver gets loaded.

Sometimes (if you have used other wireless cards on the same installation), the wireless card will come up with a different device name. You can edit the file "/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules" to force the name for a particular device to be "wlan0" (based on for example the mac address). But you should be able to see the device using 'iwconfig' before you worry about that.