[SOLVED] Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 Troubles

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

Hi, I recently upgraded my laptop's internal wireless card from ... to an Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300, and I'm having trouble getting it working. Basically I followed the instructions on http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Iwlwifi: I recompiled my kernel, installed the firmware, loaded the iwlagn module, but no luck. lspci detects the device, and lsmod confirms that the module is loaded. Any ideas?

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

For a point of comparison I booted off an ubuntu live CD and got the same results. The card was detected, and the driver module loaded, but I couldn't detect any wireless networks. Also, I know for certain that there is a strong wireless signal in the room where I've been working.

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1932

Have you looked at dmesg output?

Does the following show anything interesting?

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

dmesg reports that I'm having trouble with my firmware (thanks!). It seems to request iwlwifi-6000-3.ucode, and failing that look for iwlwifi-6000-2.ucode and then iwlwifi-6000-1.ucode. The copy of the microcode that I'm using is iwlwifi-6000-4.ucode. Any thoughts here? Why does it need an older version?

The full output of dmesg is below:

[ 0.402026] uvesafb: probe of uvesafb.0 failed with error -22
[ 3.183098] hda-intel: Codec #1 probe error; disabling it...
[ 5.568605] iwlagn: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, 1.3.27kds
[ 5.568607] iwlagn: Copyright(c) 2003-2009 Intel Corporation
[ 5.648304] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: PCI INT A -> Link[Z016] -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
[ 5.648338] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[ 5.648572] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 6000 Series 3x3 AGN REV=0x74
[ 5.676252] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 24 802.11a channels
[ 5.676342] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: irq 30 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 5.676857] phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-agn-rs'
[ 48.702230] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: firmware: requesting iwlwifi-6000-3.ucode
[ 48.762217] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: iwlwifi-6000-3.ucode firmware file req failed: -2
[ 48.762221] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: firmware: requesting iwlwifi-6000-2.ucode
[ 48.766071] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: iwlwifi-6000-2.ucode firmware file req failed: -2
[ 48.766075] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: firmware: requesting iwlwifi-6000-1.ucode
[ 48.770400] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: iwlwifi-6000-1.ucode firmware file req failed: -2
[ 48.770402] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: Could not read microcode: -2
[ 48.771251] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: firmware: requesting iwlwifi-6000-3.ucode
[ 48.775204] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: iwlwifi-6000-3.ucode firmware file req failed: -2
[ 48.775208] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: firmware: requesting iwlwifi-6000-2.ucode
[ 48.778862] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: iwlwifi-6000-2.ucode firmware file req failed: -2
[ 48.778866] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: firmware: requesting iwlwifi-6000-1.ucode
[ 48.783365] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: iwlwifi-6000-1.ucode firmware file req failed: -2
[ 48.783368] iwlagn 0000:06:00.0: Could not read microcode: -2

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1932

That is odd, considering all the ucodes on intel's site for the 6000-series are .4

Seeing that it says "(c) 2003-2009", are you using some old kernel version, and are you using the iwlwifi driver from the kernel?

What do "uname -r" and "grep IWL /usr/src/linux/.config" return?

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

"uname -r" returns "2.6.31-gentoo-r10" and "grep IWL /usr/src/linux/.config" returns
CONFIG_IWLWIFI=m
CONFIG_IWLWIFI_LEDS=y
CONFIG_IWLWIFI_SPECTRUM_MEASUREMENT=y
CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG=y
CONFIG_IWLAGN=m
CONFIG_IWL4965=y
CONFIG_IWL5000=y
# CONFIG_IWL3945 is not set

The ucode that I have I got from
http://intellinuxwireless.org/?n=downloads

which I found by following a link from
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Iwlwifi

There were only one (obvious) link for 6000 series cards, and it contained the firmware I'm using now.

optiluca · Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 4:51 pm Post subject:

I have your same card, running just fine on gentoo-sources-2.6.35-r8. I have the package net-wireless/iwl6000-ucode version 9.221.4.1 installed, kernel config as follows. I never fetched the ucode manually, just emerged the package.

grep IWL /usr/src/linux/.config

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1932

Yeah, you have to upgrade to at least version 2.6.32, since it's the first one to use the *.4 firmware

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

Okay, I've upgraded to kernel-2.6.34. Sadly, the upgrade triggered two snags that are holding me up a bit. First, my keyboard sometimes quits on my. Basically I'll start typing and after some number of keystrokes I'll will stop registering - not even a screen echo.

Second, when I boot up repeatedly on the new kernel (twice or more in a row without booting off the old kernel in between) it halts at 'Waiting for uevents to be processed ...' It complains that it can't overwrite /dev/mapper/control. My old kernel reported the same error on boot up but kept going.

Any thoughts?

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

Hi, I just did some searching and found a few threads that report bugs in the 2.6.34-r6 kernel. Given that, should I use 2.6.32 instead?

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1932

That's up to you. You can try different kernels and see which ones work best. You could try by unkeywording some other versions adding =sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-[version] to /etc/gentoo/package.keywords for 2.6.34-r11 (in case it was fixed in a later patchset) or even 2.6.35-r9.

The nice thing about kernels is that it's easy to switch between them - just put several entries in the bootloader, and if one doesn't work right, you reboot and use the other.

Edit: fixed the part keywording

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

That sounds reasonable, I could switch around until I found one that worked. I'm having a little trouble with package.keywords, though. I added

=gentoo-sources-2.6.34-r11

to package.keyword, and emerge complained that it was an invalid atom. Then I tried

=gentoo-sources-2.6.34-r11 ~amd64

which is a syntax that I've used before, and the same error was reported. I'm a little new to this - any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1932

Oops, my bad. :oops:

You need to put the full package name, so it's:

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

Right, got it. I've now tried 2.6.34-r6, 2.6.34-r10, and 2.6.35-r8. All of them suffered from the same problems: keyboard lock up after a few keystrokes, and failure to boot up multiple times in a row. Then, I tried to switch to 2.6.32, and emerge wouldn't let me go back down. To test this, I tried to go to releases of 2.6.34 lower than r6 but it wouldn't let me.

That aside, I'm starting to wonder if I'm missing something somewhere else. Is there a menuconfig parameter that I should look at?

And, one more possible clue: When I plug in an external usb keyboard, the problem persists.

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1932

What do you mean by portage won't let you? Did you do it by specifying the version?

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

I did it by adding =sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.32-r18 in package.keywords and then emerge -av sys-kernel/gentoo-sources. For versions earlier than 2.6.34-r6 it simply emerged 2.6.34-r6 (or tried, but I said 'no' at the prompt).

About the keyboard issue, I was about to start another thread (since it seemed unrelated), but then I tried one more test: I put the old wireless card back in the computer, and tried booting off the new kernel (2.6.34-r6). This time it worked, no hang ups on boot, no keyboard problems. Is it possible that the firmware or drivers for the new card (ultimate-N) are causing the problem? The ucode was masked with ~amd64.

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1932

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

Okay, thanks for the help on emerge usage. I've now install 2.6.34-r7, and it runs without keyboard hangups. But, I'm still having trouble with the wireless card. When I try to start it up with 'fconfig wlan0 up', the computer hangs. Any thoughts on that?

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

Hey, was thinking of upgrading to 2.6.35-r8 as that's what optiluca is using (in the hopes of solving the hang-up-on-boot problem), but I've read in a few places of people having other problems with 2.6.35-r8. What do you guys think?

optiluca · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 11:36 pm Post subject:

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

Okay, I'm graded to 2.6.36-r5 now, and the issue persists with the same symptoms, so it definitely isn't a kernel version issue. Any other thoughts? optiluca, maybe if you sent me your .config file I could compare and tease out the problem.

optiluca · Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 9:42 pm Post subject:

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

Okay, after looking through our .config files it's not clear to me where to go with this. I looked for parameters which seemed to be related to this issue which had been set differently. Some differences I found were mac80211 and cfg80211 were compiled as modules rather than directly into the kernel. I changed my configuration to comply, with no effect.

So, two questions: First, is there a good resource to look up what the parameters mean? Even something that would correlate them to the options in menuconfig would be great. Even better would be a deeper explanation of the options in menuconfig; though many are self explanatory some don't make sense unless you already know what they mean.

Second, do you folks this it's possible that my problem is that I have an option turned on which is interfering with the card? If so, are there any likely candidates?

optiluca · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 8:39 am Post subject:

You can look up the parameters within menuconfig itself. Just press shift + ? with an option selected to find out what the option does. You can also press shift + / to do a search in case you find an option in my .config but cannot see it anywhere in menuconfig. Just type it in, press enter and it will tell you where to find it, what it is and whether it is set or not.
_________________
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# "I don't know why. It's about 80 degrees in here!"

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jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 467

Hey Folks,

I'm still trying to tackle this wireless card issue. I've messed around with diferent paramenter settings in .config, often emulated optiluca's .config file (thanks again, by the way). I've upgraded to 2.6.38-gentoo-r6. When I upgraded I started with a fresh config file, and then added stuff to support the ultimate-N wireless card one piece at a time. I discovered that all was well until I enabled iwlagn as a module. When I did this, the problem recurred.

So, my question now is why would the iwlagn module cause my machine to hang while 'processing uevents' during boot up? Why would it cause my computer to hang at all (it froze immediately after I compiled and loaded the module even without rebooting). Note that this problem does not occur if the ultimate-N card isn't in the computer at that time, but still occurs if a different but similar intel wireless card is used.