ipw2100 unassociated..

ckwd · 03-15-2005, 12:04 AM

I use a Toshiba Laptop Satellite M30 running Debian Sarge with kernel 2.6.8

I can't seem to get my wireless network card to work properly anymore. It used to work flawlessly. I googled my question and couldn't find an answer.

iwconfig gives me this output

Code:

eggs:~# iwconfig eth1
eth1      unassociated  ESSID:"lsys"  Nickname:"ipw2100"
          Mode:Managed  Channel=0  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
          Bit Rate=0 kb/s   Tx-Power:off
          Retry:on   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX   Security mode:open
          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

eggs:~#

iwlist scan eth1 gives me this

Code:

eggs:~# iwlist eth1 scan
eth1      Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:12:17:45:22:72
                    ESSID:"lsys"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11bg
                    Mode:Master
                    Channel:6
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rate:54 Mb/s
                    Extra: Rates (Mb/s): 1 2 5.5 6 9 11 12 18 24 36 48 54
                    Signal level=-68 dBm
                    Extra: Last beacon: 11ms ago
          Cell 02 - Address: 00:04:E2:92:D5:C2
                    ESSID:"SMC"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
                    Mode:Master
                    Channel:1
                    Encryption key:off
                    Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
                    Extra: Rates (Mb/s): 1 2 5.5 11
                    Signal level=-75 dBm
                    Extra: Last beacon: 490ms ago

If I run the folllowing these commands

rmmod ipw2100
rmmod (unload other ieee modules here)
modprobe ipw2100

I get this output

Code:

eth1      IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"SMC"  Nickname:"ipw2100"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:04:E2:92:D5:C2
          Bit Rate=11 Mb/s   Tx-Power:off
          Retry:on   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=83/100  Signal level=-75 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:6

It automatically connected to an unsecured wireless network in my area.

I also tried loading the modules in an appropriate order:
ieee80211
ieee80211_crypt
ieee80211_crypt_wep
ieee80211_crypt_ccmp
ieee80211_crypt_tkip
ipw2100

After loading the last module from that order, it again connected to an unsecured wireless network in my area. Same output as above

I did not want to connect to other wireless routers so I typed ifup eth1 so that it'll load the settings from /etc/network/interfaces

Unfortunately this did not work, and it brought me back to this output

Code:

eth1      unassociated  ESSID:"lsys"  Nickname:"ipw2100"
          Mode:Managed  Channel=0  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
          Bit Rate=0 kb/s   Tx-Power:off
          Retry:on   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX   Security mode:open
          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

It remains unassociated. I can't see what I'm doing wrong, this is a very odd issue.

Help me out if you can, I don't want to purchase a PCMCIA :[

- ckwd

enemorales · 03-15-2005, 03:33 PM

Hi,

I had the same problem until... a couple of minutes ago. My card worked perfect with Gentoo, but not in Debian (which I installed few days ago). I have kernel 2.6.8 also, so hopefully this would work for you also. This is how I made it work

First, I checked that I had support for ARC4 in the cryptographic algorithms: I noticed that Gentoo was loading that module. In Debian I had it in the kernel, so I changed to module, recompiled everything and rebooted.

Second, the version of the IPW drivers weren't the same. When I emerged the packages, Gentoo downloaded the version 0.56 of the drivers and the version 1.2 of the firmware. I had 1.05 and 1.4 in Debian... so I downgraded. I copied the packages from my Gentoo partition, compiled the driver and installed the firmware files. Then I run dhcpclient and voila! I'm posting from Debian !!!

Good luck!

Just a side remark: I'm not using ieee80211_crypt_ccmp or ieee80211_crypt_tkip. ipw2100 seems as it doesn't need them.

ckwd · 03-15-2005, 06:15 PM

I solved the problem, I'm not sure why it didn't work in the first place but this is what I did

1) First I downloaded both firmware and source from http://ipw2100.sf.net
2) modules-assistant a-i ipw2100 (it'll load from the ipw2100 tgz file)
3) Next, the .deb package was placed into the /usr/src directory
4) dpkg -i ipw2100-modules-2.6.8_1.0.5-2_i386.deb
5) modprobe ipw2100

This is the very first thing I did when I first downloaded the latest firmware and ipw2100 driver. It's very odd that it did not work in the first place. I issued those steps two times (including the first time) and it didn't work.

I was fed-up so I tried it again, practically the 30th time and poof! I connected. Not sure what's going on

but I'm happy =)

Thanks