So I decided to give my 6-year old laptop a "second second-chance" and installed Debian-based Xubuntu 7.04. All went well... I connected my ethernet card, executed the Update Manager application and installed additional packages. Then I deemed my laptop ready, connected my wireless card and... nothing happens. The 'LINK' and 'ACT.' LEDs are dead, and so is my wireless card!

Here is the only device I see (the built-in modem) when I go to Applications > System > Network:

Modem connection
This network interface is not configured

I had some issues with the 2WIRE card with Linux before, but back then at least the card was detected... now, not even that! I also tried to troubleshoot the problem by myself, but I came to the conclusion that "I don't speak Networking".

I hope someone may be able to shed some light on my situation and guide me step-by-step. I will be happy to write more info and specs at ones request given that I am instructed the means to do so.

All and any contribution will be greatly appreciated.

Andre W.

Well, I did some reading around... and ended up even more puzzled! But I found out about some handy commands, namely ifconfig and iwconfig that list network interfaces (like eth0 and wlan0). However, my PC card seems not to be listed among the interfaces.

ifconfig

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:500 (500.0 b) TX bytes:500 (500.0 b)

iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

irda0 no wireless extensions.

In addition I learned about the lsmod command that lists kernel modules (e.g. device drivers), and in my case I have to look for specific modules: hermes; orinoco; orinoco_cs; orinoco_pci; pcmcia; pcmcia_core; and/or prism. But when I carry out the instruction, it lists only two of the cited modules.

lsmod

Module Size Used by
... ... ...
pcmcia 39212 0
... ... ...
pcmcia_core 40852 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
... ... ...

I also tried the lspci, to list my PCI devices... however, much like the lsmod, I did not make sense of the output.

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: ALi Corporation M1632M Northbridge+Trident (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ALi Corporation PCI to AGP Controller (rev 01)
00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:04.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c3)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 01)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533/M1535 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV/V/V+]
00:08.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 Power Management Controller [PMU]
00:11.0 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC100 PCI to Cardbus Bridge with ZV Support (rev 32)
00:11.1 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC100 PCI to Cardbus Bridge with ZV Support (rev 32)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 (rev 5d)
06:00.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation ISL3886 [Prism Javelin/Prism Xbow] (rev 01)

Finally, just for the record, I checked my interface file.

/etc/network/interface

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

auto eth2
iface eth2 inet dhcp

auto ath0
iface ath0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp

And that is as far as I go... maybe now someone will be able to point me on the right direction and help me to figure this out.

Thanks in advance,

Andre W.

Here are my new findings:

My 2WIRE 802.11g card has a Prism54 (ISL3886 Prism Javelin/Xbow) chipset. I think the 2WIRE 802.11b cards in the other hand have Orinoco chipsets.

In order to detect my "Prism" card, linux kernel has to load prism54common and prism54pci modules. Ubuntu and its official Ubuntu-based distros have the two modules in version 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) but they are not loaded by default.

I do not know where to write the two lines, but for the sake of the test, I typed them using the terminal (Applications > System > Konsole):

sudo modprobe prism54common
sudo modprobe prism54pci

Now, lsmod lists the two newly loaded modules:

lsmod

And when I run ifconfig and iwconfig they list two new interfaces, wlan0 and wmaster0. Both interfaces are also listed when I open Applications > System > Network:

Wireless connection (wmaster0)
Wireless connection (wlan0)

Then I picked one (wlan0), enabled and configured it, and voila! Both LEDs (LINK and ACT.) on my 2WIRE wireless card are solid and I successfully connected to my router.

So far so good, but I still have no idea on which file the modules are to be loaded.

I found out the file where prism54common and prism54pci are to be added:

/etc/modules

# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.

fuse
lp
prism54common
prism54pci

Now my card is already being detected even before I log on, and everything is working smoothly!

I hope the thread might be of some help to someone else.

Best regards,

Andre W.