# ipw2200 not working: wrong firmware

## KKtm

Hi

I'm pretty fucked up with this topic already, so I hope somebody is able to provide me some help.

I have a IBM T43 with a Broadcom Gigabit (tg3) and a Intel Pro Wirless 2915ABG (should work with IPW2200 Driver)

My wired network just did it's job from the beginning, but now I'm trying to get the wireless working as well. I emerged now the newest ipw2200-driver (ipw2200-1.0. :Cool:  and according to this the ipw2200-firmware-2.4. After some adventureous emerge-safaris I finally got everything on my machine. But still no networking possible over this chip. So I did some more research and remarked the following lines in /var/log/dmesg:

 *Quote:*   

> grep ipw /var/log/dmesg
> 
> ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.0.0
> 
> ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2004 Intel Corporation
> ...

 

=> It tries to load firmware 2.2!

Some more research brought me to the following page: http://www.openthought.org/blosxom.cgi/Blog

Here the important lines:

 *Quote:*   

> It turns out this is a problem with new versions of udev. The module firmware has to get loaded somehow.... and hotplug normally takes care of it. But, newer versions of udev register themselves as the default firmware handler. Compounding the matter is that it doesn't come with a mechanism for handling said firmware loading, it simply registers itself as the handler. Silly.
> 
> It's completely fixable, you just have to tell udev how to load firmware.
> 
> To solve it, you need to add a rule to udev. In the dir /etc/udev/rules.d, I created the file '999-firmware.rules' (it has to run last). In that file, I added this line:
> ...

 

I had to get the testing-branch of udev as well (the stable version provides no firmware_helper so far)

But still it tries to load the old firmware...

So my knowledge and abilities to google information is at its end. I hope some cracks can give me some more advise (my school will totaly switch to wireless within the next days)

I will take some sleep now and hope for suggestions  :Smile: 

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## dgaffuri

You've ipw2200 1.0.0, which is not the latest version and requires firmware 2.2. Which kernel are you using?

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## KKtm

Oops, thats right.

I guess that's still the driver which was included in my 2.6.14-rc4-mm1 Kernel. I will try to recompile the kernel without the driver, to use the emerged module. But still the firmware should be loaded, as at the moment in /lib/firmware are the firmware-files for 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4 present...

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## dgaffuri

Try with the new one and post here if you still have problems.

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## nemoflo

I had the same problem.

I solved it by emerging the last 'ipw2200-firmware' (my arch is ~x86).

 :Shocked:  And after, i have renamed all 'ipw-2.4-xxx.fw' by 'ipw-2.2-xxx.fw' the '/lib/firmware/' repertory.

 :Laughing:  And it's running for me now !!!

 :Wink:  Enjoy it.

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## Benjamin1

and what, If ipw2100 users and prism54 users (I am such one) have this problem?

After emerge -uD world, my laptop has no internet connection.

could some crack help me?

I even do not have the udev ebuild. Only the kernel has udev activated (which was made by genkernel.....)

Thank you for any help.

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## Benjamin1

For others who are plagued by this problem:

The behaviour of my System seems to be related to this problem

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=104470

(these users report the same issues, but think it is an udev problem. My 2.6.12.2 Kernel does use good old devfs and I have it also)

There exist some solutions in the bugreport. This one:

echo "/sbin/hotplug" > /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug

made my firmwares load.

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