Intel Wireless Problems

[binyamin]

I'm setting up debian etch and everything's working except the wireless. On Ubuntu & OpenSuSE my wireless card is detected without a problem. I read on another post to add the firmware to /lib/firmware and modprobe ipw2200. when i run dmesg | grep -i ipw2200 i get the following output:

ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.1.2kmq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
ipw2200: failed to register network device
ipw2200: probe of 0000:02:02.0 failed with error -5
ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.1.2kmq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
ipw2200: failed to register network device
ipw2200: probe of 0000:02:02.0 failed with error -5

i don't know what -2 error means...

this is lsmod's output:

ipw2200 93824 0
ieee80211 29416 1 ipw2200
ieee80211_crypt 5952 1 ieee80211
nls_iso8859_1 4256 1
isofs 32540 1
udf 73156 0

that relates to ipw2200.
iwconfig yields:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.


and /etc/networks/interface reads:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
#allow-hotplug eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

#auto eth0

wireless-tools, network manager and wpasupplicant are all installed. If anyone could help me finish this it would be greatly appreciated and I can finally rid myself of m$.

thanks.

[antidrugue]

I'm setting up debian etch and everything's working except the wireless. On Ubuntu & OpenSuSE my wireless card is detected without a problem. I read on another post to add the firmware to /lib/firmware and modprobe ipw2200. when i run dmesg | grep -i ipw2200 i get the following output:

ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.1.2kmq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
ipw2200: failed to register network device
ipw2200: probe of 0000:02:02.0 failed with error -5
ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.1.2kmq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
ipw2200: failed to register network device
ipw2200: probe of 0000:02:02.0 failed with error -5

i don't know what -2 error means...

Those errors are very suspicious, are you sure you copied the firmware in /lib/firmware/ ?

Can you post the output of

ls -l /lib/firmware/

?

It should output something like that :

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 191142 2006-03-07 14:49 ipw2200-bss.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 185660 2006-03-07 14:49 ipw2200-ibss.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 187836 2006-03-07 14:49 ipw2200-sniffer.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12007 2006-03-07 14:49 LICENSE.ipw2200-fw

[binyamin]

here's the output:

Debian:/etc/network# ls -l /lib/firmware/
total 364
-rw-r--r-- 1 binyamin binyamin 4952 2004-07-02 13:48 ipw2200_boot.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 binyamin binyamin 164280 2004-07-02 13:48 ipw2200_bss.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 binyamin binyamin 159268 2004-07-02 13:48 ipw2200_ibss.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 binyamin binyamin 16066 2004-07-02 13:48 ipw2200_ucode.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 binyamin binyamin 11880 2004-07-02 13:45 LICENSE

thanks for the quick response. it's greatly appreciated.

[antidrugue]

That's not the right firmware version, you need the latest version, which is 3.0.

You can download it from here :
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php

Make sure you delete the content of /lib/firmware/, and then copy the new version 3.0 in there.

[binyamin]

That did the trick. Thanks so much.

The only problem i'm having now is connecting to an encrypted network. It's a linksys router that was set up under windows with an encryption key; when I type in the string of numbers and letters that windows provides, it just sits there and rejects it. Do I need some other package to install? I use WEP-128 passphrase option because hex and ascii don't even allow me to connect. The setting for the passphrase is open system and when I tried shared it doesn't work either.

Again, thanks so much for your help.

[VashTSPD]

I just wanted to say thanks, this worked wonders for me too. I have Debian Etch, and WPA worked the first time.

[LinuxNoob86]

I want to thank you. After 3 days of searching the web and trying a ton of different suggestions, non was as easy and simple as this and this one actually worked. I will not that not only should you drop the package in the /lib/firmware/ but I also had to copy the contents into the /lib/firmware/ and it worked after that by running the "modprobe ipw2200" (no quotations).

Big Thanks for your help.

I have BackTrack 5 R1 and this did the trick.