Comments on: Using IPW3945 instead IWL3945 for Intel wireless 3945 in hardy

By: Jim Verhovec

Jim Verhovec — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:13:14 +0000

I’m using Ubuntu v-9.10 on my Toshiba A105 S 4384 laptop. The Intel 3945ABG [Golan] connects to my router at home. I configured it when this computer was still a Windows computer. I have changed completely to Linux and all worked well. I connect at home using a Belkin Wireless G router. That is the only way I can connect. Whenever I try to use any other router or wireless device, it will not connect. I have played with many of the system settings - both preferences and administration. It will only work using my home Windows configured router. But Windows has been removed. I even took it to the local college for help, but they could not help either. Is there any information out there? I am not new to Linux, but I don’t have a lot of experience with it. Can someone help? Thank you.

By: Bruno

Bruno — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:59:34 +0000

I have used the link given by Larry December 10 and it seems there is now no problem.

By: Larry

Larry — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:22:01 +0000

Artyom: Look at post #38. If you follow it, you should be fine.

By: Artyom

Artyom — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 09:07:11 +0000

SOS!
Can’t patch ipw3945.h
>Hunk #1 FAILED at 108.
>Hunk #2 FAILED at 143.
Lenny 2.6.26-1-amd64
…Any way to make it work ?

By: Larry

Larry — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:20:57 +0000

The 2.6.27 patch can be found here. The other patches are still available at Juergen's site. Their located here and here.

By: Andi

Andi — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:38:03 +0000

Does anybody still have the patch for the 2.6.27 kernel? Both http://james.colannino.org/downloads.html and http://www.funknetztest.de/ don’t seem to have it anymore.

By: Larry

Larry — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:35:53 +0000

For those having issues with upload speeds on your local LAN there is a patch that has been included in the newest compat-wireless testing branch. This patch most likely won't be included in the 2.6.27 kernel but will show up in the new 2.6.28 kernel I have tested the new drivers in the compat-wireless-2008-12-09. testing branch on my own LAN and I am now able to get speeds equivalent to my IPW3945 driver.

By: DaveC

DaveC — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 04:54:54 +0000

sorry about that address is:

http://sudan.ubuntuforums.com/showpost.php?p=6160706&postcount=17

and the fix actually works!!

By: DaveC

DaveC — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 04:53:40 +0000

for anyone who is just looking to stop the LED light from blinking try this fix if found on this ubuntu forum post:

By: DaveC

DaveC — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:38:20 +0000

Nevermind my pleas, I have finally figured it all out, I reinstalled the kernel itself and everything including pdanet is up and working………glory be thy name, thank you all for putting up with my questions, as well as answering them

By: DaveC

DaveC — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:02:56 +0000

Alright….I have given another shot, and I have gotten much further, it seems that even though I did have the kernel headers installed for my kernel….somehow in my fussing about with this I had installed the server kernel as well, so after I purged all the header files and reinstalled the linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic I stopped getting the previous error when I used the make command, so thank you larry for pointing me in that direction…..of course I still not all the way there….I have correctly compiled and installed the driver/module……..the problem I am having is when trying to insert the module. dmesg | grep ipw gives me this

[ 5084.601632] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_wx_get_encodeext
[ 5084.602218] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_wx_set_encode
[ 5084.602425] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_wx_get_encode
[ 5084.602879] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_txb_free
[ 5084.603171] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_wx_set_encodeext
[ 5084.603699] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_wx_get_scan
[ 5084.603951] ipw3945: Unknown symbol escape_essid
[ 5084.604414] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_freq_to_channel
[ 5084.605313] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_set_geo
[ 5084.605953] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_rx
[ 5084.606160] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_get_channel
[ 5084.606595] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_channel_to_index
[ 5084.607527] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_rx_mgt
[ 5084.607734] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_get_geo
[ 5084.608072] ipw3945: Unknown symbol free_ieee80211
[ 5084.608774] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_is_valid_channel
[ 5084.608999] ipw3945: Unknown symbol ieee80211_get_channel_flags
[ 5084.609406] ipw3945: Unknown symbol alloc_ieee80211

I saw Torfinn had gotten a similar error, and Larry you said to rebuild the module, which I have done, but I don’t know what to change in the process to have a different result….I have a feeling that I may have messed something up when I tried to install a few weeks ago and I think I tried compile ieee80211-1.2.16 unsuccessfully….Well thats where I am right now….by the way I am using a Dell inspiron 1420n that is running ubuntu 8.10 64-bit

James Laugesen: yeah I’ve read that forum before, I figured that the problem I had was because of the iwl driver….you had to use the ipw3945 driver for it to work right?

By: James Laugesen

James Laugesen — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:55:58 +0000

@DaveC: well I can confirm that it is working nicely for me (XPS M1330 + ibex + iphone + pdanet). I plan to blog full details of my “solution” when I get some time.

But I basicly followed iblanken’s post here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=952546

I excluded the 25NetworkManager stop/start commands though obviously (since ibex doesn’t have 25NetworkManager).

Stopping NM in ibex (/etc/init.d/NetworkManager stop) seemed to cause all sorts of strange system faults for me. I haven’t tested that since using IPW3945 though.
So for now I have just been manually disabling ‘Wireless’ via the NM applet.

Also worth noting, I experienced _extremely_ slow connections when the ad-hoc network (between iphone & laptop) is encrypted. I suspect this is due slamming the iphone CPU(?), since the same thing happens on my non-IWL/IPW laptop also.

Cheers, good luck with it

By: DaveC

DaveC — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:07:33 +0000

hey, I hadn’t checked this page out in a while….gonna read through it and give it another go and let you know how it works out,
James Laugesen: haha, that is exactly why I want to get this working, so that I can get pdanet on the iphone working with my laptop

By: James Laugesen

James Laugesen — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:49:21 +0000

Just want to say thanks to everyone involved here, after a week of messing about, I’m posting this from a dell XPS m1330 running 64bit intrepid, tethered to an iPhone via ad-hoc.

Thanks everyone!
James

By: Torfinn

Torfinn — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:15:12 +0000

Larry and everybody: I did what I should have been doing in the first place; I booted a Xubuntu 8.10 livecd and tested my wireless there. It showed up as wlan0 and worked fine, so I just went back to my hard drive installation and undid all the things I did when I tried the ipw3945 driver. Then I did one more thing: I removed all lines from /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and then I restarted udev. Voila - now my wireless works with the iwl driver:
tingo@kg-home:~$ sudo lshw -C network *-network description: Wireless interface product: PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: wmaster0 version: 02 serial: 00:13:02:3e:d4:ce width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list logical ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwl3945 ip=10.1.150.12 latency=0 module=iwl3945 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abg *-network description: Ethernet interface product: NetLink BCM5789 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 21 serial: 00:16:36:54:a9:ae capacity: 1GB/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.94 firmware=5789-v3.49a latency=0 link=no module=tg3 multicast=yes port=twisted pair *-network DISABLED description: Ethernet interface physical id: 1 logical name: pan0 serial: 42:ad:dc:f9:68:08 capabilities: ethernet physical configuration: broadcast=yes driver=bridge driverversion=2.3 firmware=N/A link=yes multicast=yes
Why it didn’t work when I upgraded from 7.10 to 8.10 I don’t know, but perhaps the udev file was polluted already.

By: Larry

Larry — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:50:41 +0000

I noticed that the formatting of my previous post was changed by me using the cite formatting tag. So here are the corrections.

Insert into the blacklist file
blacklist iwl3945 blacklist mac80211 blacklist cfg80211

and

Insert into the 00local file
#disable iwl3945 to allow ipw3945 install iwl3945 /bin/true

Torfinn: If you still have error messages after making any changes then it would be best to start a new forum thread on either http://www.ubuntuforums.org or http://www.linuxquestions.org. The comments section here isn’t the best way to troubleshoot your problems. You will also get more eyeballs looking at your problem as well. So post the forum link here if you still need help.

By: Larry

Larry — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 04:26:23 +0000

Torfinn: I’m not sure what that error means. I did some googling but I didn’t come up with a clear answer. You might want to make sure that both drivers aren’t being loaded at boot. Try lsmod | grep iwl and lsmod | grep ipw. If you get a result from both commands, then each of the drivers are loade and conflicting with each other. I’m assuming that this is not the case but its worth trying. It could also be that the ipw3945 driver is conflicting somehow with the ieee80211 subsystem. In that case I would sudo make uninstall the ipw3945 driver and rebuild it again.

I don’t use Ubuntu anymore but I’m currently writing this message from an Ubuntu 8.10 LiveDVD with the ipw3945 driver installed and running. So instead of troubleshooting I’ll write the commands that I used to get the driver up and running on the LiveDVD. Hopefully, you can compare the steps from the following steps to the ones you tried.

Compiling IPW3945 Driver:
# mkdir ipw3945 # cd ipw3945 # wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ipw3945/ipw3945-1.2.2.tgz # wget http://bughost.org/ipw3945/ucode/ipw3945-ucode-1.14.2.tgz # wget http://snapshot.debian.net/archive/2007/08/06/debian/pool/non-free/i/ipw3945d/ipw3945d_1.7.22-5_i386.deb # tar zxf ipw3945-ucode-1.14.2.tgz # sudo cp ipw3945-ucode-1.14.2/ipw3945.ucode /lib/firmware/ # sudo dpkg -i ipw3945d_1.7.22-5_i386.deb # sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Insert into the blacklist file
blacklist iwl3945
blacklist mac80211
blacklist cfg80211

# sudo touch /etc/modprobe.d/00local # sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/00local

Insert into 00local
#disable iwl3945 to allow ipw3945
install iwl3945 /bin/true

# sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Change
SUBSYSTEM==”net”, ACTION==”add”, DRIVERS==”?*”, ATTR{address}==”00:13:02:03:d7:d1″, ATTR{type}==”1″, KERNEL==”wlan*”, NAME=”wlan0″

to
#SUBSYSTEM==”net”, ACTION==”add”, DRIVERS==”?*”, ATTR{address}==”00:13:02:03:d7:d1″, ATTR{type}==”1″, KERNEL==”wlan*”, NAME=”wlan0″
SUBSYSTEMS==”pci”, DRIVERS==”iwl3945″, ATTR{type}==”1″, NAME=”wlan0″

SUBSYSTEMS==”pci”, DRIVERS==”ipw3945″, NAME=”wlan0″

# tar zxf ipw3945-1.2.2.tgz # cd ipw3945-1.2.2 # wget http://funknetztest.de/downloads/ipw3945/ipw3945-1.2.2-kernel-2.6.27.patch # wget http://funknetztest.de/downloads/ipw3945/ipw3945-1.2.2-kernel-2.6.24.patch # patch -p0 --verbose < ipw3945-1.2.2-kernel-2.6.24.patch # patch -p1 --verbose < ipw3945-1.2.2-kernel-2.6.27.patch # make SHELL=/bin/bash # sudo modprobe -r iwl3945 # sudo make install # sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart
or, alternatively, just reboot instead of the previous restart step.

As I said earlier, I’m writing this from an Ubuntu 8.10 LiveDVD with the IPW3945 driver currently running, so I know this works without installing anything other then patch from Synaptic. I didn’t include the patch installation step since you already have it installed. I bypassed the checkinstall step as well because I wanted to keep this longwinded setup as short as possible. I, also, highly recommend using checkinstall to make the ipw3945 driver because that will help you uninstall the driver via Synaptic when there is a kernel upgrade.

If you see any differences between your installation and the previous steps then I would try making the necessary changes. If you still get errors from dmesg then please reply back with the errors you are running into.

By: Torfinn

Torfinn — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:55:40 +0000

Larry: Ok, I got these patches from Juergen’s site: ipw3945-1.2.2-kernel-2.6.24.patch, ipw3945-1.2.2-kernel-2.6.27.patch. I patched and installed the ipw3945 module - no problem. Then I blacklisted the iwl3945 module and rebooted. Now I get this in dmesg and /var/log/messages:
root@kg-home:~# dmesg | grep 3945 [ 21.864415] ipw3945: Unknown symbol escape_essid

By: Larry

Larry — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:34:49 +0000

DaveC: I received this error as well the first time I tried running make on Ubuntu 8.10. A similar if not the same error was mentioned earlier in the comments by SlowPoison here. First, before running make I would make sure you have the kernel headers installed for your currently running kernel. Second, I'm also assuming that you've applied both of the patches from Juergen's website to the ipw3945-1.2.2.tgz driver. Third, take Steve's advice and run make SHELL=/bin/bash instead of make. That should get you going. Let us know how it goes. Torfinn: I have the exact same laptop that you have. Don't worry about the patch originally posted here. Juergen's website has both of them for download. In my second comment I put a link to a forum post about installing the driver on Ubuntu using checkinstall. The only difference between that post and your distro (Xubuntu 8.10) is that the kernel now is 2.6.27 and so you need to patch the ipw3945 driver with both patches from Juergen's website. For the record...I think the iwl3945 driver is stable to use on a daily basis. The only issue I have found is that on my LAN I'm getting poor upload performance to my media server. With iwl3945 I get ~200-400kB/s, but with ipw3945 I get ~1.6-2.0MB/s. The weird thing is that the download from the exact same media server is the same for both drivers (~1.6-2.0MB/s). I've looked over on the bugzilla forums on intellinuxwireless.org but haven't found anybody with the same performance issue.

By: Torfinn

Torfinn — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:19:22 +0000

The patch mentioned initially isn’t available any more (http://james.colannino.org/downloads.html seems to have disappeared) I upgraded my laptop (Acer Aspire 5672) to Xubuntu 8.10, and now my kernel is 2.6.27-8.
Are there a patch / working procedure to get ipw3945 working with this kernel?