# [solved] ipw2200 is crushing my will to live

## hardyb

I have an IBM T42 with an Intel 2200 wireless card.

I was using this and this guide to try and set it up.

Long story short, I've got support for the card compiled into the kernel (2.6), I see it load at start up and have edited the configs I read about (/etc/conf.d/net and wireless) with the proper information, comes up in lspci, but I don't know how to actually START the damn thing. I know my wired card is on net.eth0, but I've always been pampered with networking in gentoo so I don't know how to figure out how what device the wireless is on to get it to start.

If someone can help this nub, I'd appreciate it. If you need more information, I'll send it, but I'm pretty positive I just don't know what I'm doing well enough.

Also, I tried recompiling without 802.11 support to modprobe in ipw2200, but I edited my .config file and when I ran 'make', it used the menuconfig setup which was wrong because I edited .config directly. I tried to find the command to use the file directly, but it kept whining to me about 'no file' something or other. So then I tried 'Loading an alternative from file' in menuconfig and then 'make', no dice.

So I decided to ask you guys instead and start playing with fluxbox.

Also, the madwifi stuff *I THINK* isn't for my card. Apparently they also shipped with some other wireless card. I only THINK that because I haven't actually tried it, but the setup identical to mine where the guy used it said he got dropped alot with the madwifi driver.

*sigh*

Thanks in advance and sorry for asking to be spoonfed,

--Hardy

::EDIT:: I just read the /etc/conf.d/wireless isn't used anymore, just net. So you can skip pointing that out. :-D

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## kornhs4

To sum up, you have the following installed: 

 kernel 2.6 built in ipw2200 driver

 wireless-tools

and what can you actually not do? Anyway, I hardly recommend the following way: 

 Remove the built-in ipw2200 driver from kernel (they use oder versions and I do not know if they are compatible with the ieee80211 from the portage

 Install ieee80211 and ipw2200, as well as ipw2200-firmware from portage

After that a 'modprobe ipw2200' should load the driver. If this is done, just type 'iwconfig' to see which network interfaces have wireless extensions. For me, eth0 has none (this is my ethernet card), eth1 has one.

```

mynewbestpart shuber # iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.

dummy0    no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"My SSID"

          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:10:8A:86:17:32

          Bit Rate:48 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   Sensitivity=8/0

          Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off

          Encryption key:[Sure, i have deleted the entry *g]   Security mode:open

          Power Management:off

          Link Quality=75/100  Signal level=-54 dBm  Noise level=-88 dBm

          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:1  Rx invalid frag:0

          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

```

If this works - even if your card did not connected to a network - your card works and you have to set up your network settings. For that I can recommend wpa_supplicant. But I do not want to glut you with information. So lets stop at this point.

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## hardyb

#  Remove the built-in ipw2200 driver from kernel (they use oder versions and I do not know if they are compatible with the ieee80211 from the portage

# Install ieee80211 and ipw2200, as well as ipw2200-firmware from portage

...did you mean HEARTILY reccomend? Like you DO reccomend it? Or Hardly, like you don't.

I'm not trying to be a smartass, I honestly don't know.

I'll assume the former and start now.

The problem I am forseeing is ieee80211 won't roll if you have any kind of 802.11 support compiled with the kernel and close as I can tell, you can't disable all the support for it without killing the entire networking branch (at least not working through menuconfig). Is there something else NOT in networking I'm missing...?

--Hardy

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## UberLord

Uh, we're planning on dropping the ipw* ebuilds and the ieee-80211 ebuilds (i think) as the in-kernel ones are much preferred.

Just use a 2.6.18 gentoo-sources kernel and you'll be fine  :Smile: 

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## uweklosa

I also have a T42 and I'm using the build-in ipw220 with gentoo-sources-2.6.18.

Did you install the wireless-tools? Did you create a symbolic link net.eth1 to net.lo?

If you also install ifplugd the system will try to start your wireless connection automatically. You don't have to add net.eth1 to the default runlevel then.

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## hardyb

Thanks for the info Uber and everyone else. I got it humming along although it won't pull a DHCP entry from my router. Tried hardcoding the IP, no dice. Not sure what's going on.

For anyone curious, I did it the mod-probe method and it works great. I'll probably tackle trying the in-kernel stuff later today and see if I can get it to work.

Thanks again for the help.

--Hardy

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## UberLord

Try upgrading to dhcpcd-3.x - or another dhcp client.

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## hardyb

Alright, thanks again Uber, but I fear I am too nub to figure out how to install dhcpcd 3.x without it being in portage (only version in portage I found is 2...6?). Anyway, I'll declare this one solved because I am getting it working, even if it isn't actually connecting to anything.

Off hand, I did try my old kernel that had the support compiled in, but couldn't get the wireless to start. I linked it to net.lo and ran ./net.eth1 start (which is what worked in the modprobe kernel), and it says there's no device tied to eth1. iwconfig doesn't report it detects the wireless either.

Anyhow, I'll switch this to [solved] and if I still can't get it to pull a dhcp entry by tonight, I'll probably be back.

Thanks,

--Hardy

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## albright

I don't know but maybe your wireless isn't associating with

your access point. What happens if you manually try that,

like:

```
iwconfig eth1 essid whatever key s:whatever
```

If that works then try getting an address

(please ignore this if this is all old news and not working)

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## hardyb

Just an update, I disabled the WEP on my wireless and now can connect and browse normally.

I'm floating.

HUGE thanks to whoever did the net.example and wireless.example files, they were a MONSTROUS help. (I'm sure they'll read this, yea?) And thanks again to everyone who took time to help me out, y'all are what make the Linux community work.

For what it's worth, WEP isn't working correctly. I'm still playing with it, apparently there are multiple ways to pass the key and I haven't found the magic pattern yet.

One last question if anyone is paying attention...

My net.eth0 (wired) keeps trying to come up at boot which I am usually not connected on. My question is, it doesn't have an entry in rc-update... how else could it get on the bootup list?

Thanks again for y'alls help. Hopefully sometime I'll be able to answer some of these questions, yea?

--Hardy

::EDIT:: Here's something interesting: when the wireless fails to connect (presumably because of the WEP key) it says...

```
eth1 connected to ESSID "foosball" at XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
```

The problem here is, the MAC address it's reporting is not the same as the one reported for the AP on my Linksys (gag) BEFW firmware page. Just a nonsequitor, probably nothing.

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## kornhs4

 *UberLord wrote:*   

> Uh, we're planning on dropping the ipw* ebuilds and the ieee-80211 ebuilds (i think) as the in-kernel ones are much preferred.

 

I can't believe it - will they be really dropped? - Everyone (ok, there only few) is using the ebuild instead of the kernel drivers.

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## UberLord

Too much trouble maintaining them for newer kernels I think. Development is happening in the kernel now and the released drivers haven't been updated in ages, hence their pending removal.

However, I'm not the dev taking this decision so don't blame me  :Smile: 

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