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Post subject: [solved] Intel PRO 3945 issues, Dell Inspiron E1505
 Posted: Jul 13, 2007 - 10:27 PM
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Joined: Jul 13, 2007
Posts: 5
Status: Offline
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First off, thanks for the distro. I've been using sidux on my desktop for a long while now, and it's been great. I love apt.
Second, thanks in advance to anyone who posts on this topic, I really apreciate the help.
Okay, so here's my situation. I just bought a laptop, a Dell Inspiron E1505, which is a version of their Inspiron 6400 as near as I can tell.
I've got an Intel Pro Wireless 3945 card in it:
Code:
jmhobbs@asuka:~$ lspci | grep 3945
0b:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
jmhobbs@asuka:~$
Thing is, I can't get the bugger to come up.
I've tried several methods, starting with the item in the sidux manual that says to apt-get iwlwifi-ucode and ranging as far as trying to build it all from source.
I haven't had any luck, I could never get iwconfig to think it was a wireless card.
Right now I'm back on a fresh install, since I know I left mangled files all over with the previous attempts. I've installed the iwlwifi-ucode, but it's a no-go. My card comes up as "eth1", is that normal? I saw in this post that the card was called "wlan0" for that user.
Code:
asuka:/home/jmhobbs# ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:B9:84:8B:16
inet addr:192.168.1.2 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::219:b9ff:fe84:8b16/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:196888 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:106384 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:298011786 (284.2 MiB) TX bytes:7882712 (7.5 MiB)
Interrupt:22
eth1 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 37-4F-C0-00-16-6E-15-81-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1280 (1.2 KiB) TX bytes:1280 (1.2 KiB)
asuka:/home/jmhobbs#
As near as I can tell the module is loaded, I'm not really a linux guru though 
Code:
asuka:/home/jmhobbs# lsmod | grep 3945
iwl3945 79204 0
mac80211 149636 1 iwl3945
asuka:/home/jmhobbs#
So, does anyone have any suggestions for me?
On a side note, I've never had a dual core machine before, whats the right kernel arch for that? A normal 686? Right now I have an odd one with "smp" and I don't really know what it is. S___MultiProcessor maybe? Just wondering.
Code:
asuka:/home/jmhobbs# uname -a
Linux asuka 2.6.21.3-slh-smp-4 #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon May 28 13:55:43 CEST 2007 i686 GNU/Linux
asuka:/home/jmhobbs#
Thanks again for reading this! |
Last edited by pinesolpirate on Jul 14, 2007 - 09:33 PM; edited 1 time in total
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Post subject: RE: Intel PRO 3945 issues, Dell Inspiron E1505
Posted: Jul 14, 2007 - 12:17 AM
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Joined: Dec 19, 2006
Posts: 803
Status: Offline
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Post subject: RE: Intel PRO 3945 issues, Dell Inspiron E1505
Posted: Jul 14, 2007 - 05:54 AM
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Joined: Dec 02, 2006
Posts: 954
Location: East Coast
Status: Offline
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try
Code:
apt-get update
apt-get install iwlwifi-3945-ucode
update-rc.d -f ipw3945d remove
rmmod iwl3945
modprobe iwl3945
the combination of rmmod & modprobe always does it for me |
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Post subject: RE: Intel PRO 3945 issues, Dell Inspiron E1505
Posted: Jul 14, 2007 - 07:37 AM
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Joined: Jul 13, 2007
Posts: 5
Status: Offline
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Thanks for the replies!
@ kelmo, I have loaded the firmware, I mentioned that but only briefly up in my post, thanks though
@ op4latino, No luck, here's the full transaction, less some of the upgrade junk...
Code:
asuka:/home/jmhobbs# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
amarok amarok-xine configure-ndiswrapper
configure-networkcard digikam hal k3b kaffeine
...
The following packages will be upgraded:
binutils debhelper gcc-4.2-base gimp gimp-data libgcc1
libgimp2.0 libsasl2-2 libsasl2-modules libstdc++6
10 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 33 not upgraded.
Need to get 14.3MB of archives.
After unpacking 520kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Get:1 http://ftp.debian.org sid/main gcc-4.2-base 4.2-20070712-1 [211kB]
...
Fetched 14.3MB in 13s (1096kB/s)
debconf: delaying package configuration, since apt-utils is not installed
(Reading database ... 92516 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace gcc-4.2-base 4.2-20070707-1 (using .../gcc-4.2-base_4.2-20070712-1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement gcc-4.2-base ...
...
asuka:/home/jmhobbs# apt-get install iwlwifi-3945-ucode
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
iwlwifi-3945-ucode is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 33 not upgraded.
asuka:/home/jmhobbs# update-rc.d -f ipw3945d remove
Removing any system startup links for /etc/init.d/ipw3945d ...
asuka:/home/jmhobbs# rmmod iwl3945
asuka:/home/jmhobbs# modprobe iwl3945
asuka:/home/jmhobbs# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
eth1 no wireless extensions.
asuka:/home/jmhobbs#
Is there anything else I can provide to help debug this? Has anyone tried ndiswrapper, is that an option? I've never used that. |
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Post subject: RE: Intel PRO 3945 issues, Dell Inspiron E1505
Posted: Jul 14, 2007 - 07:51 AM
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Joined: Dec 02, 2006
Posts: 954
Location: East Coast
Status: Offline
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Post subject: RE: Intel PRO 3945 issues, Dell Inspiron E1505
Posted: Jul 14, 2007 - 10:46 AM
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Joined: Dec 04, 2006
Posts: 421
Status: Offline
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or simply return to ipw3945.
the new iwlwifi-driver do not work for me too with intel 3945, but the "old" ones still work.
apt-get install ipw3945d (demon that must be running )
apt-get install ipw3945-source
m-a a-i ipw3945
then a
rmmod iwl3945
and a subsequent
modprobe ipw3945
and an
/etc/init.d/ipw3945d start
should bring the device up properly.
this demon is an annoying, suspend-blocking, proprietary piece of compiled garbage, but it still seems the only way for some of us to get intel 3945 wlan working.
greetigns,
me
p.s. SMP stnads for "simultaneous multi processing" and means nothing more than that it is the right kernel for more than one processors. (though in the meantime there is no penalty any more for running an sMP-kernel on uniprocessor-machines, so we could probably remove this suffix from the kernel names.) |
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Post subject: RE: Intel PRO 3945 issues, Dell Inspiron E1505
Posted: Jul 14, 2007 - 09:32 PM
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Joined: Jul 13, 2007
Posts: 5
Status: Offline
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Success!!! Kinda...
@ op4latino, Thanks for the dist-upgrade tip, that cleared all those held-back packages. The card does work in Vista, so it's 'good' hardware. I've got 2.6.21.3-slh-smp-4.
@Ge0rgy, I tried switching out and using the daemon version. I also apt-get'd firmware-ipw3945 and blacklisted iwlwifi in the mac80211 like the manual says. I still got nothing. The daemon comes up, and doesn't complain about anything. I tried stopping the daemon, unloading the module, then reloading it and the daemon and rebooting to no avail.
Finally I tried booting into the "single-user only" option in grub, just to see what it did. Suddenly there was a new interface, "eth2" and it had wireless extensions. I don't know what the difference is between run-levels, but at least I have wireless now.
Thanks again to everyone who helped, if I figure out what the difference really is, I'll be sure to post.
P.S. Thanks for the SMP explanation Ge0rgy. |
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Post subject: RE: Intel PRO 3945 issues, Dell Inspiron E1505
Posted: Jul 15, 2007 - 10:07 AM
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Joined: Dec 04, 2006
Posts: 421
Status: Offline
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well, the first thing i always check when wlan is not working properly is, if iwlwifi-modules are laoded.
even when you blacklisted them, surely better to double-check. (lsmod)
if they are there, you should rmmod them and then just rmmod and re-modprobe ipw3945 or better, remove the module and re-start the demon, which in turn should auto-load the module if it starts.
also it is good to check "dmesg" output afterwards to see if there are some useful messages/promts which may contiain hints on the problem.
greetings,
me |
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Post subject: RE: Intel PRO 3945 issues, Dell Inspiron E1505
Posted: Jul 15, 2007 - 10:06 PM
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Joined: Jul 13, 2007
Posts: 5
Status: Offline
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Thanks again everyone. I had screwed up some other things and I decided to try over again.
I got iwlwifi working just fine, so I'm going to put down my full procedural just in case someone else has problems with an Inspiron E1505.
1) Fresh install.
2) Boot up, get ethernet up, do "apt-get dist-upgrade"
3) "apt-get install iwlwifi-3945-ucode"
4) Reboot into "Single-User" option
5) Try to bring up wlan0 (It didn't come up for me, but better safe then sorry, right?)
6) Reboot into normal mode.
7) Wlan0 should work.
I don't know how or why it worked this time as opposed to when I used the metapackage on a fresh install, but it did.
Thanks again all. |
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Post subject: RE: Intel PRO 3945 issues, Dell Inspiron E1505
Posted: Jul 11, 2008 - 10:16 PM
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Joined: Oct 23, 2007
Posts: 14
Location: Concord, NH
Status: Offline
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Wow, just goes to show what a few months will do for you in terms of improvements. Instead of the Dell Inspiron E1505, I have a Lenovo 3000 Model Y410. Instead of it being the summer of 2007, it was the spring of 2008 for me. I put sidux 2008.01 on my laptop. Right off the bat, I had some success. I did have to go and do an apt-get install firmware-iwlwifi while using a wired connection, then I made sure that ceni was working, and with it I configured my ipw3945 card, the same one that you had. It was easy and I was off using wireless in no time at all. Too bad this stuff is "non-free", otherwise it would be on the CD. Vendors who don't care about software freedom can get this card going even easier, but of the "free" guys, it is as easy here as anywhere, and the manual documents the steps well. I am guessing that the manual has changed since last summer on this point. I did not get my first home wireless system until this past winter, though I had run sidux before. By the time I reached this spot, any issues were cleaned up. Your report undoubtedly helped the development team find ways to improve the system, so thanks very much! Of course, I write and speak glowingly of sidux wherever I go, and around my inner circles I have probably convinced at least a half dozen people to run sidux (but many more may be doing so after they see what I write).
Great job, guys, keep it up!
My buddy anticapitalista is doing some nice stuff with some of your code. He grabbed ceni eariler and he is about to apply some of h2's work with smxi (I know, not OFFICIALLY part of sidux), but really an integral part of it anyway. Anti's earlier work came from SimplyMEPIS, which has very high quality Debian stuff, but it also mucks with the kernel, is not 100% free, and the pace of work has virtually ground to a halt. Therefore anti seems to be using a lot more ideas from sidux. Two of the best Debian derivatives around. SimplyMEPIS is really awesome for the simple, basic crowd. I keep several copies around to bail me out when I do crazy stuff. sidux and antiX are my other favorites. I love sidux because it is cutting edge stuff that works. I love antiX because it is small and fast. With these three distros I can do just about anything.
Congrats! sidux displaced SimplyMEPIS sometime late last year as my most frequently used system and has remained there since! |
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