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Roman_Gruber
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Joined: 03 Oct 2006
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Location: Austro Bavaria
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 Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:06 am Post subject: Question about net-wireless/iwl4965-ucode [solved] |
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Hi,
Its my first time to try my wireless nic. It shows up with ifconfig -a. So I thought it would work. But it didn*t until I installed the following package:
| Code: |
[I] net-wireless/iwl4965-ucode
Available versions:
(0) (~)4.44.1.18 4.44.1.20 228.57.1.21
(1) 228.57.2.21 228.57.2.23 228.61.2.24
Installed versions: 228.61.2.24(1)(02:27:09 14.03.2010)
Homepage: http://intellinuxwireless.org/?p=iwlwifi
Description: Intel (R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN ucode |
So: The homepage says: http://intellinuxwireless.org/?p=iwlwifi, bla bla your nic is supported in kernels 2.24 upwards! So why did my nic doesnt work without this ebuild installed? Is this a binary code which needs to be installed and everybody knows that? Like nvidia drivers with my vga card?
I think my wlan nic works now, Because the commands: iwlist --scan works now. I will do the config files later. I am a little bit bored and I don*t want to do it know!
ah i forgot my lscpi output:
| Code: | localhost UrbanTerror # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 04)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 04)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 04)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 04)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 04)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 04)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f4)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HBM (ICH8M-E) LPC Interface Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Device 01b3 (rev a3)
02:00.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Device 01b3 (rev a3)
02:01.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Device 01b3 (rev a3)
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G94 [GeForce 9800M GTS] (rev a1)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
06:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)
0a:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 02)
0b:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
0b:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
0b:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
0b:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
0b:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)
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Last edited by Roman_Gruber on Tue Mar 16, 2010 5:57 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Shining Arcanine
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| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:43 am Post subject: |
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| An old firmware version might have been provided by the kernel support, which would explain why it worked without the external firmware. In theory, it should be better to have the latest firmware, so installing the ucode was a good idea. If it is being used, you should see something about it being loaded in dmesg. |
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Roman_Gruber
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Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 3846
Location: Austro Bavaria
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Shining Arcanine wrote: | | An old firmware version might have been provided by the kernel support, which would explain why it worked without the external firmware. In theory, it should be better to have the latest firmware, so installing the ucode was a good idea. If it is being used, you should see something about it being loaded in dmesg. |
The point was, that the wifi card wasn*t working without the ucode. But I saw the device. Usually I thought, ether i see the device in "ifconfig -a" and it works or I dont see the device in "ifconfig -a".
But it seems to be common practise to install extra ucode for the wifi card |
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disi
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Roman_Gruber
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Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 3846
Location: Austro Bavaria
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 5:57 pm Post subject: |
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Aha,
Learned something. So firmware aka ucode is needed to run a wifi card.
I know whats firmware is, but the term ucode was new to me.
Ok, everyone do it this way, so its ok. Topic solved
Thx everyone for clarifying things. |
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disi
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 7:32 pm Post subject: |
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It's not only wifi cards. For example my Radeon card needs the radeon-ucode (AMD firmware) in the kernel. 
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Shining Arcanine
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Joined: 24 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 10:33 pm Post subject: |
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| tw04l124 wrote: | Aha,
Learned something. So firmware aka ucode is needed to run a wifi card.
I know whats firmware is, but the term ucode was new to me.
Ok, everyone do it this way, so its ok. Topic solved
Thx everyone for clarifying things. |
While you already figured things out on your own, I would like to add that there is a Greek letter that looks a great deal like the letter "u", which is used in science to mean micro, and the term microcode is a synonym for firmware, so ucode would be another term for firmware. |
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Roman_Gruber
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Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 3846
Location: Austro Bavaria
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| Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 10:30 am Post subject: |
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omg.
thx,
i have studied in the field of electronics. But i didn*t catched that.
ucode ... u ... micro => microcode
well, I Know the letter myu.
Thx a lot |
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pianosaurus
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Joined: 19 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2010 7:06 pm Post subject: |
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I'd just like to add that microcode and firmware are not typically synonyms. Some companies use them interchangeably (e.g. IBM, according to wikipedia), but firmware is usually used about code in non-volatile memory (such as flash) that is loaded into RAM and executed like any other embedded software.
Microcode, on the other hand, is usually used about instructions loaded into a lower level specialised memory. For example, when a PC program executes on a modern CPU, the instructions are actually translated to an even lower level by microcode in the CPU before being executed. This microcode can also be updated by software, by the way.
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