Talk:Ipw2200

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Revision as of 20:10, 31 January 2006 by Gsmenden (Talk | contribs) (Sudden breakage... resolved!)
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The ipw2000 drivers loads clean on my t42 and the interface eth1 is accessible. However, the wireless-lan LED does not light and i cant connect. Havent figured out what this is.

Radio Switch utility needed

I have the same problem. WiFi adapter must be turned on before using. In Windows software utility is executed by Fn+F5 keys. This utility turns WiFi and/or Bluetooth adpters on/off. In Linux Fn+F5 controls only Bluetooth adapter. Unfortunately I can not find switch utility yet (10 Sep 2005).


Try using the usual hotkey hooks to activate the power management features described in the article. --Thinker 04:37, 18 Nov 2005 (CET)


Reliability problems

On a T43p ipw2200 v1.0.6 works well 95% of the time with WPA using wpa_supplicant. However it seemingly randomly causes trouble and refuses to connect (it is not the router, as non-linux devices work.) It always recovers with a killall wpa_supplicant, unloading the ipw2200 and ieee80211 modules, and reloading everything (you can even write a "netreset" script to do this for you automatically, as I have done.)

It's frustrating, because this is so un-"linux-like" to have intermittent unreliability. Usually things work 100% or 0% of the time on my linux system. Note, I have not used the 2.6.15-rc kernel version nor 1.0.8 with WPA yet, this problem might be fixed. Can anybody verify? --Gsmenden

Same problem here with a Linksys router and WPA, no problem with other routers ... I'll try the new kernel and ipw2200--Xoby 18:35, 15 January 2006 (CET)
I've tried and still had problems, I also edited my wpa_supplicant file to:
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=0
eapol_version=1
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1
### Associate with any open access point
###  Scans/ESSID changes can be done with wpa_cli
network={
       ssid="myssid"
       psk="mypass"
       priority=1
       proto=WPA
       key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
       pairwise=TKIP CCMP
}

And successfully transfered more than 5 Gb without any problem--Xoby 11:16, 19 January 2006 (CET)

Sudden breakage...

Have any of you had recent problems while running debian sid with ipw2200-1.0.10 and ieee80211-1.1.9 on a t43p? All of a sudden since 2d ago my wireless initialization gives the following error report:

   Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
       SET failed on device eth1 ; No such device.
   Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :
       SET failed on device eth1 ; No such device.
   SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
   eth1: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
   SIOCSIFNETMASK: No such device
   eth1: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device

I can load the modules without complaint, but can not use the device. I have tried everything obvious to fix it: reinstalling via module-assistant the ipw2200 and ieee80211 drivers, downgrading to old versions, manually installing from sources without module-assistant, disabling then re-enabling the adapter in the BIOS, etc. I have the 2.3 and 2.4 version firmware in the appropriate directory.

I was ready to dismiss this as a hardware problem, but when I boot up knoppix or suse-live-dvd, the wireless works consistently!  ??? Odd that this suddenly break - I can not think of anything that triggered this, but I do "apt-get upgrade" approximately daily.

I'm running 2.6.14.6, but my 2.6.15.1 build also suddenly displays identical behavior... gsmenden 11:30, 30 January 2006 (EST)


Bizarre. Delving through the ipw2200-devel archives reveals several users having similar non-detection issues due to trouble loading the firmware. In the /etc/hotplug area one person solved a similar issue by removing firmware.agent file, which did not work for me.

I decided to completely remove the hotplug system

apt-get remove --purge hotplug

followed by re-apt-getting hotplug. Voila, everything works as before. Sometimes Debian sid is as flaky as a baklava - an ill-timed "apt-get upgrade" can effectively destroy your system when running unstable, yet "stable" is far, far too behind the times for me...  :(

gsmenden 13:55, 30 January 2006 (EST)