Connecting to Wireless?? Must be missing something.

PulsarSL · 09-20-2005, 03:19 PM

no special firmware is installed

ilikejam · 09-21-2005, 06:44 AM

That would explain why it's not working then.

Have a wee squiz over here:
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/

All is revealed in the first page google returns from 'ipw2100'.

Dave

PulsarSL · 09-22-2005, 02:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ilikejam
That would explain why it's not working then.

Have a wee squiz over here:
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/

All is revealed in the first page google returns from 'ipw2100'.

Dave

Is upgrading the firmware safe or is it going to end up destroying my card?

It says I need to know the version of my ipw2100 driver to download the correct formware (http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/firmware.php). How can I tell?

Thanks
PulsarSL

ps - my faith in linux is restored

Shade · 09-22-2005, 03:26 PM

Pulsar, the firmware resides in volatile memory in these cards. Restart your box, and the firmware is cleared.

SuSE couldn't distribute the firmware with the installation because of the license it's under. All you should need to do is download the correct firmware revision to some sort of media you can read from linux, and extract it to /lib/firmware with this command

Code:

cd /lib/firmware
tar -xzvf firmware-XXX.tgz
rmmod ipw2100
modprobe ipw2100

After that, bring the interface down and back up again and you should be ready to roll on the net.

To find out what version of ipw2100 you have installed:

Code:

modinfo ipw2100 |grep version

The link to the firmware is along the top at http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net

--Shade

halo14 · 09-22-2005, 04:57 PM

firmware is not stored in volatile memory.. that is RAM.. firmware is not volatile.. your router doesn't loose all it's configuration settings when it is power cycled does it?

Firmware is an update to the basic software that resides on the card...

Drivers are what you want.. and I think that the 'firmware' packs supplied with suse should have it.. even if you do upgrade to the latest firmware... that's what you want.. just as you should keep your router firmware, etc. updated to the most recent.. for additional features/bugfixes/security patches/etc.

ilikejam · 09-22-2005, 10:54 PM

In this case, (as in a number of wireless cards and other peripherals, like USB ADSL modems) the firmware has to be uploaded to the card every time the card is powered up, so a binary firmware image has to be present and sent to the card before it will do anything usefull.

Shade · 09-22-2005, 11:09 PM

Halo14, this card (and the 2200 b/g counterpart) do indeed load the firmware into volatile ram in the NIC.

System RAM isn't the only RAM in your box, you know?

--Shade

edit to add: I believe the Windows drivers for these cards load firmware at each boot as well.
edited again to add: Halo, you're also right that firmware usually is in non-volatile ram, eprom or eeprom. But not in this case

onjoo · 09-23-2005, 03:44 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Shade
Pulsar, the firmware resides in volatile memory in these cards. Restart your box, and the firmware is cleared.

SuSE couldn't distribute the firmware with the installation because of the license it's under. All you should need to do is download the correct firmware revision to some sort of media you can read from linux, and extract it to /lib/firmware with this command

Code:

cd /lib/firmware tar -xzvf firmware-XXX.tgz rmmod ipw2100 modprobe ipw2100

--Shade

There is also rpm packages for easyer installation:
The one that is included in dvd can be downloaded from here:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.3...5-3.noarch.rpm

Or if your interested about the newer version, download from here:
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat...oarch.rpm.html

I know that there is some license issues, but the package should be included also in cds or it should be put available with YOU.
Same problems with new OpenSuse versions. There are several wlan applications and modules, but no ipw-firmware. Yast finds the interface but system can´t use it without the firmware.

halo14 · 09-23-2005, 07:45 AM

thanks for info guys.. very odd.. I've never seen this kind of functionality.

PulsarSL · 09-23-2005, 04:20 PM

thanks, i'll give it a shot in a second...

PulsarSL · 09-23-2005, 04:55 PM

Hmm... "modinfo ipw2100 |grep version" doesn't return an error, but doesn't return anything. It just goes to the next line, waiting for me to enter another command, as if it was executed successfully.

I tried the first firmware (the .44 version) anyway, but it still returned no scan results.

Any idea why modinfo isn't working?

thanks

pulsar

ilikejam · 09-23-2005, 05:09 PM

Are you using the driver from that sourceforge page (along with the firmware)? If not, you probably should.

Also, modinfo doesn't return any version info on any of the modules on my machine.

Dave

PulsarSL · 09-24-2005, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ilikejam
Are you using the driver from that sourceforge page (along with the firmware)? If not, you probably should.

Also, modinfo doesn't return any version info on any of the modules on my machine.

Dave

I don't know. I'm confused again

. I installed SuSE and it recognized my card. Under info for the hardware it says it's using module ipw2100.

I downloaded all four firmwares, and ran that modinfo to see which I needed, but modinfo didn't return a version. So I don't know what I need to do now.

ilikejam · 09-24-2005, 12:39 PM

OK, download this:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/i...0.tgz?download
(that's the latest stable driver for your card)

And this:
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/firmware.php?fid=4
(that's the latest firmware)

and follow the instructions here:
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/INSTALL

The instructions are a bit concise, so hit us back if there's any problems.

Dave

archtoad6 · 09-25-2005, 09:44 AM

I ran:

Code:

 for M in `lsmod |  awk '{print $1}'`
 do
    echo -ne "$M  \t"
    modinfo $M |  grep -i version
    echo
 done

and got nothing but a list of my modules, not 1 piece of version info.

Just in case, I changed 'version' to 'ver', which found a bunch of " ... /drivers/ ... " lines.

Then I went to ' ver' which got me one " verbose ..." but nothing related to versioning.

My final test code looked like this:

Code:

 (for M in `lsmod |  awk 'NR>1 {print $1}'`
 do
    echo -ne "$M  \t"
    modinfo $M |  grep -i ' ver' |  grep -v verbose
    echo
 done)   | less

Looks like none of my installed modules include any ver. info.

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