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enabling ipw3945 without ipw3945 kernel driver.

Sun, 2008/03/23 - 4:50pm — clemens

As Intel states on http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/ this driver is deprecated and mine is not functional for WPA-2.

So I have to replace the driver IPW driver with the IWL driver from http://intellinuxwireless.org.

It turned out that my not functional IPW driver was due to how the passphrase for my wireless was stored with gnome-keyring-manager. It was stored into the 'default' keyring and not into the 'login' keyring. So this story title is not covering the end result. But still. The commands are useful to me and hopefully to you too.

Commands used are

lsmod | grep ipw
ipw3945               120224  1
ieee80211              34248  1 ipw3945

But using

sudo dmidecode > dmidecode.log
is not showing any wireless related piece of hardware :-/

I do have an 2.6.22-14-386 according to

uname -a > uname-a.log

And it is 'Ubuntu 2.6.22-14.52-386' according to

cat /proc/version_signature

The driver is really loaded

dmesg | grep ipw
[   21.076000] ipw3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945 Network Connection driver for Linux, 1.2.2mp.ubuntu1
[   21.076000] ipw3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
[   21.080000] ipw3945: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection
[   23.760000] ipw3945: Detected geography ABG (13 802.11bg channels, 23 802.11a channels)

And at last

sudo lspci -vvnn
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express
reveils among others.

So I still have no clue what to do next. But running

modprobe -c | grep ipw39
install ipw3945 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ipw3945 ; sleep 0.5 ;   /sbin/ipw3945d-$(uname -r) --quiet
remove  ipw3945 /sbin/ipw3945d-$(uname -r) --kill ;     /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove ipw3945
alias pci:v00008086d00004227sv*sd*bc*sc*i* ipw3945
alias pci:v00008086d00004222sv*sd*bc*sc*i* ipw3945
reveils a clue.

So would

sudo modprobe --remove ipw3945
work?

And now install

sudo modprobe iwl3945
and we're done?

I don't know. I understand a few things about the kernel and about the above commands used. But how do I get this driver loaded all the times?

Darn ... now my wireless is gone. Doing a

sudo /etc/init.d/hal restart
makes it live again.

Using the network-manager applet doesn't help much. Adding a new network with a hidden SSID let me enter the network password. But then nm-applet shows no green leds. Making the SSID public gives me 1 green led.

Now I just deleted the default keyring from my keyring manager and guess what ... the new password is added to the login keyring and wireless is working.

references
- http://intellinuxwireless.org
- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/105420
- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24/+b...

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