I cannot connect my Dell 1420 to the Internet using Slackware 13.0. I know the network card works because I was running Ubuntu fine before that crashed probably for unrelated reasons.

The details. My card is given by lspci as: Network controller Intel Corp. Pro/Wireless 3945ABG[Golan]Network Connection (rev02). Slackware.com> Configuration >Network Setup suggested that netconfig would do everything. I ran that giving suitable answers. Lsmod shows module iwl3945 running and several which are used by it. Psaux shows iwl3945/0 and 1. I assume, since netconfig had no complaints, that iwl3945 is suitable for the card. When I do "ifconfig wlan0 up" the wireless light comes on. When I do "dhcpcd wlan0", it says:
"err,wlan0:timed out" and "warn,wlan0:using IPV4LL address 169.254.15.145".

Does anyone have a suggestion?

Hi dafydil, Welcome to LQ. I believe you need the iwlwifi module. The iwl3495 project is deprecated.

Good luck. ;-)

Peacedog,

Thanks for your reply. I wrote a long answer which got wiped out when the San Jose Library logged me off, so I will condense it a bit. I think I have the latest thing. The Intel site said the iwlwifi software had been integrated since 2.6.24 (I think it was), and I have 2.6.29. The library /lib/modules/.....iwlwifi/ has iwl3945.ko in it, so Slackware seems to be saying that I really have iwlwifi. But I wonder whether I am leaving a step out. Slackware does not explain the steps. I need a driver or "ko" module, I need some intermediate processes, and I have iwl3945/0 and 1, whatever they are, and dhcpcd daemon. I think there is a procotol stack related process called 80211 something involved, though I do not run it myself. What I do is say "ifconfig wlan0 up" and "dhcpcd wlan0". Is there some other software I need, or are there other commands I should give? I'd appreciate your suggestions on this.

Install wicd network manager. it's in the extras of your installable media.

Thanks to Basheer for the suggestion concerning wicd. Unfortunately, that did not work either in my case. I found wicd, as you suggested, on the installation disk, and amongst the several files and several Readme's (all suggesting different things) I seem to have installed it from a bz2 file using the Slackware pkgtool command. Amongst all the reading I seem to remember a statement that on booting I would find it in the "system tray" or something like that. Now on booting I have the iwl3945 module, a couple of iwl3945 processes, a couple of 80211 modules, and the wicd module. A thing slightly different is that wlan0 shows up (with empty fields) to the ifconfig command. There is no icon of any sort that I could find anywhere on the screen. I tried the good old "dhcpcd wlan0" command, but it gave the same message as before, that there was an error. Where might I go from here?

Further comment on my problem. Looking in syslog I found that "hp_systray cannot be run as root", which is what I was doing (in order to give a little authority to my efforts). I switched to my user account and tried again. There was a wicd entry in the application choices. When I clicked on it, the message was: "Unable to contact the Wicd daemon due to an access denied error from DBus. Please check that your user is in the netdev group." --I will be trying to figure out how to get into the netdev group. If anyone knows a quick way to do it, I'd appreciate it.

Substitute dafydil for your user account name.

Good luck. ;-)

Do you have the ucode in /lib/firmware? That's also needed for the driver to work.

What does ifconfig -a display?
Can you post it here?

With thanks to all, my Internet connection seems to be working! Thanks to Peacedog; I got into the "netdev" group. Mr. Miller, the ucode and everything else were put into the system by the Slackware builder; that was part of the mystery. Basheer, the biggest mystery of the business is that Slackware, which I consider careful and organized, said nothing that I noticed in the Slackware book about wicd, even though they had the whole thing on the installation disk, with about four conflicting descriptions in its directory of how to install it. I do not think an ifconfig of wlan0 is necessary now. When I ran wicd, it listed the available networks and let me choose, just as one would hope. I feel pretty sure the problem is solved.

Glad you got it sorted.

Good luck. ;-)