IPW2200 stop to work after upgrading

[fjecp]

Hi, I have Backtrack 4 installed in a HDD and not updated since maybe May 2010.

Today morning I just updated/upgraded my Backtrack 4 and the wireless my Thinkpad has (Intel 2200 BG) stop to work.

Looking to the booting messages I read something about "Main .... error ... cannot load ipw2200....". Afterwards (as expected) when booting is finished, I looked for eth1 and, as expected, it doesn't exists....

I found another forum topic of about July 2010, already closed, where the answer was "talked with other colleagues/developpers and it is a known issue to be fixed in the coming days with a new module update..."

http://www.backtrack-linux.org/forum...-2-6-34-a.html

Is it already fixed? Is there still any plan for fixing it? How can I get my wireless again working?

Finally, sorry for the very basic question, but being a somehow newby in Linux, is any way I could do a "roll-back" to the situation I had before the upgrading?

Thanks so much for your help

[fjecp]

I found the way to solve this issue, but people arranging the update packages do have some work to do

It seems that doing the upgrade to 2.6.34 the firmware for the ref. wireless adapter is lost in /lib/firmware.

Cue came to me from the post of an italian colleague:

http://www.backtrack-linux.org/forum...-firmware.html

Then, in order to have it translated into english with some more detailed instructions for newby people as I am, let me put here the exact things to be done:

Download the firmware from the official site:

Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG Driver Firmware (in my case the file was ipw2200-fw-3.1.gz)

Then, it has to be uncompressed:

tar xzvf ipw2200-fw-3.1.gz

ipw2200-fw-3.1
ipw2200-fw-3.1/ipw2200-bss.fw
ipw2200-fw-3.1/ipw2200-sniffer.fw
ipw2200-fw-3.1/LICENSE.ipw2200.fw
ipw2200-fw-3.1/ipw2200-ibss.fw

Last step is to copy all those files in directory ipw2200-fw-3.1 to /lib/firmware/

You can test and check it doing

rmmod ipw2200
modprobe ipw2200
iwconfig

And our old eth1 should be again there !!!!

Again, the update packages developpers should do some work to avoid the ref. firmware to be lost.

[tommysmith]

I do like guid in top, I have same problem like that, I use IBM T40 with wireless ipw2200 and ipw2915 is same :

 
root@bt:~# rmmod ipw2200
root@bt:~# modprobe ipw2200
root@bt:~# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

irda0     no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11abg  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed  Channel:0  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   Sensitivity=8/0
          Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

root@bt:~#

However, I still can't use wifi what should I do now

[ataferner]

I have the same problem as tommysmith on a Thinkpad T43

I get the following error:

airmon-ng start eth1
eth1 Intel 2200BG ipw2200 - [phy4]mon1: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device

[RadarG]

I tried ataferner's solution I didnt have any issues but I still cant see cant connect wireless.

[dan13206]

I was having the same problem but realized that the OS is looking for the files in /lib/firmware but the files were in /lib/firmware/ipw2200-fw-3.1! Simply copy the files from the ipw2200-fw-3.1 folder and paste them in /lib/firmware. After doing that, I have not had a problem.