Connecting to wireless networks with ipw3945 & ndiswrapper

Pobega · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 49

After failing to get the ipw3945 and iwl3945 drivers working, I decided to try the ndiswrappers route. Everything seems to work, except that dhcpcd times out when I try to connect to my network. After consulting with a friend on IRC (not #gentoo) he told me a bit of information I've never even heard of...

Pobega · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 49

Note: I actually ended up getting my wireless working by running "dhcpcd wlan0", but now I need to do it at every boot. Is there any way to set up wpa_supplicant to run that after associating my interface with my router?

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:55 am Post subject:

If you are using ndiswrapper, you must use a .22 or a .25 kernel. If you are using a .23 or .24 kernel, you will either get tenuous connections, or none at all...more so the latter. The .22 kernels also tend to play nice with wpa_supplicant.

Blessed be!
Pappy
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d2_racing · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 11:48 am Post subject:

Can you post your lspci, because if you have a IPW3945ABG, there is no reason at all that the iwl3945 will not work. Maybe that you can retry and I think that we can figure what is going on.

Pobega · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 49

Pobega · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 49

Well I am running a new kernel and the deprecated ipw3945 drivers (patched to work on >=kernel-2.6.24) but I'm having the same problem. I see eth1, I can scan networks, I can associate with them, but once I try to run a DHCP client on the interface it times out. Is there any way to see what the problem is specifically?

d2_racing · Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 2:08 pm Post subject:

First, you need to remove all of your ipw3945d program, because you need to use the new Iwl3945 driver.

After that, we can help you to make this thing work

jeanfrancis · Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 4:05 pm Post subject:

I agree with d2_racing, you should abandon any ipw3945 driver or ndiswrapper, iwlwifi will continue to work an will be upgraded, so switching now will avoid you many problems in the future

First, get rid of any ipw3945 or ndiswrapper package.

Then, edit your kernel. Get rid of the old 802.11 stack and enable mac802.11 stack as a module.

Then, you may want to read those sections :

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_ipw3945#iwlwifi
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_ipw3945#iwlwifi_2

Compile your new kernel and boot it. (If you only changed modules, you may just make modules_install and avoid to reboot).

Your driver should then work, you'll have the wlan0 interface. You need to create the init script net.wlan0 :

Pobega · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 49

The thing is I've tried 4 different kernels with iwlwifi, and no matter what I don't even get a wlan0 interface (which I got on i686 Gentoo, but now I'm on amd64). And yes, I installed the ucode. For some reason the drivers just don't recognize my card...I've tried so many times.

Edit: Running kernel 2.6.25-r2 with iwl3945 drivers, and everything installed correctly (I triple checked), yet I don't have a wlan0 interface. I also removed the line for the ipw3945 drivers from /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent.net-rules (That is the filename off of the top of my head, could easily be wrong). Nothing. Nada. Nilch.

edit2: Here's my config -- http://rafb.net/p/GqDhTV32.html

kernelOfTruth · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 11:24 am Post subject:

Pobega · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 49

jeanfrancis · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 3:40 pm Post subject:

Could you please post the outputs of :

Pobega · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 49

jeanfrancis · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 4:06 pm Post subject:

Your security options on your kernel are wrong.

Set them in-kernel, rebuild it, boot it, and watch the magic happen

purak · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 4:18 pm Post subject:

Hi,
Do you try this command?

Pobega · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 49

http://rafb.net/p/2385oM67.html is my config, and yet I'm still getting compile fails.

jeanfrancis · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 4:23 pm Post subject:

Pobega · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 49

The same ones as before, and what aren't right about them? They are the same as in what you told me to put in the .config file.

jeanfrancis · Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 6:01 pm Post subject:

Do not modify .config itself, always use make menuconfig to configure your kernel.

Your .config file is not available anymore, but when I read it, I didn't see any cryptographic option right after CONFIG_CRYPTO=y.

And as I remember, you never talked about compile errors, but errors in dmesg when trying to load the driver.

Use menuconfig to build in-kernel all the cryptographic algorithms I shown you and your problem should be resolved...

Pobega · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 49

jeanfrancis · Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 12:47 am Post subject: