LinuxQuestions.org - Intermittent wireless problem (IPW2100)

Hi Guys,

I'm having an intermittent problem with my wireless Intel IPW2100 running Fedora Core 5.

When I cold boot the system, I manually start the network service but sometimes when it tries to initialise eth1, it fails and says the device is not present.

When I run iwconfig, the wireless device is there but is given a random alias of dev<number>. When this problem happens, it won't let me run any of the wireless commands because it can't talk to the device.

I can normally fix the problem by removing the module and re-installing it (with the modprobe command). I'm using the very latest IPW2100 drivers and IEEE80211 subsystem.

This problem is really starting to bug me. Below is a dump of one instance I had this problem and fixed it by reinstalling the module:

dev6262 unassociated ESSID:off/any Nickname:"ipw2100"
Mode:Managed Channel=0 Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate=0 kb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface eth0: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface eth1: ipw2100 device eth1 does not seem to be
present, delaying initialization.
[FAILED]

[root@localhost ~]# modprobe -r ipw2100
[root@localhost ~]# modprobe -i ipw2100
[root@localhost ~]# service network restart
Shutting down interface eth0: [ OK ]
Shutting down interface eth1: [ OK ]
Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface eth0: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface eth1: [ OK ]
[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig eth1 ESSID bat
[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"bat" Nickname:"ipw2100"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point:
00:0F:3D:9C:9E:06
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=100/100 Signal level=-57 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

I'd greatly appreciate if anyone has any suggestions.

Thanks
Justin