Mandrake 10.1, brand new installation on a HP pavillion zt3000 (actually zt3201us)

For some reason, wireless-tools package on this distribution (iwconfig, iwlist, etc) are not able to change some attributes on the wireless card (e.g. mode and key).

Some examples:

# iwconfig eth1 mode Managed
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; Operation not supported.

# iwconfig eth1 key [1] "ABC"
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; Operation not supported.

Specific attributes for this driver are

# iwpriv eth1
eth1 Available private ioctl :
set_power (8BE0) : set 1 int & get 0
get_power (8BE1) : set 0 & get 80 char

Driver information:

Vendor: ‎Intel Corp.
Description: ‎Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG
Media class: ‎NETWORK_OTHER
Module name: ‎ipw2200
Mac Address: ‎00:00:00:00:00:00
Bus: ‎PCI
Location on the bus: ‎2

Thanks for any help

Can you post your ifconfig output. You might be trying to configure a wired interface.
I'm fairly sure
# iwconfig eth1 key [1] "ABC"
is not the way to set wep encryption.

Thanks for your reply

This computer has the following configuration:
eth0 - Wired ethernet connection - unplugged right now
eth1 - Wireless connection, through Intel's 2200 BG - not working, the one I am trying to fix
eth3 - Wireless connection, through PCMCIA, working (connected right now)


All righty -- I have the following results:

# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:02:3F:6F:EF:66
inet6 addr: fe80::202:3fff:fe6f:ef66/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0x8000

eth3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:90:4B:00:DA:4D
inet addr:192.168.123.130 Bcast:192.168.123.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::290:4bff:fe00:da4d/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:89 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:84 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:10138 (9.9 Kb) TX bytes:13221 (12.9 Kb)
Interrupt:5 Base address:0x100

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:168 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:168 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:12464 (12.1 Kb) TX bytes:12464 (12.1 Kb)

# iwconfig eth1
eth1 unassociated ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Channel=0 Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=0kb/s
RTS thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off

# iwconfig eth3
eth3 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"my ESSID" Nickname:"nick"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437GHz Access Point: 00:50:18:09:C0:40
Bit Rate:11Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality:32/92 Signal level:-98 dBm Noise level:-149 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:1 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

And below, a copy-and-paste of iwconfig's man page (regarding setting keys on cards that support multiple keys)

key/enc[ryption]
(...) To set a key other
than the current key, prepend or append [index] to the key
itself (this won't change which is the active key). (...)
Examples :
(...)
iwconfig eth0 key [3] 0123-4567-89

And as far as iwlist reports, eth1 supports 4 keys and 2 key sizes

eth1 2 key sizes : 40, 104bits
4 keys available :
[1]: off
[2]: off
[3]: off
[4]: off
Current Transmit Key: [0]

And see what I found on syslog

Dec 16 09:42:52 localhost kernel: ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: 0xFFFFFFFE
Dec 16 09:42:53 localhost kernel: ipw2200: ipw2200_boot.fw load failed
Dec 16 09:42:53 localhost kernel: ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: 0xFFFFFFFE
Dec 16 09:42:54 localhost kernel: ipw2200: ipw2200_boot.fw load failed
(....)

Repeated thousands of times --- related maybe?

Well -- following these instructions ...

http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/INSTALL

the firmware now loads -- for kernel 2.6.8-1 you have to load firmware version v0.6-v0.16 from http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php

The bottom line is: this message(unable to load...) is now gone, but the original problem (SET failed on device eth1 ; Operation not supported.) still persists...

Any help is greatly appreciated...

Happy new year...
New year, old bugs -- I am still unable to make it work. Any suggestions?

Dec 16 09:42:52 localhost kernel: ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: 0xFFFFFFFE
Dec 16 09:42:53 localhost kernel: ipw2200: ipw2200_boot.fw load failed
Dec 16 09:42:53 localhost kernel: ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: 0xFFFFFFFE
Dec 16 09:42:54 localhost kernel: ipw2200: ipw2200_boot.fw load failed


The above is critical to getting the driver to work due to the way this driver is engineered. The firmware contains the most important parts of the driver.

I am not sure about Mandrake 10.1 but this helped me.

In some current releases of OSs they have been including driver/firmware with the release for the IPW2200 and IPW2100 and its critical to remove all previous traces both in the /lib/modules/yourkernel/etc and the hotplug directory. Then grab both the new 1.0 driver and the correct firmware from sourceforge.

Hope that helps.