Wireless Driver Issue - IBM R52 / 2915ABG - Works with Ubuntu 10.04 / Fails with BT5

[awells]

I have been having issues getting my internal wireless card working. I know the wireless card works with Ubuntu 10.04 by testing with the live CD, so I waited for the upgrade until I asked for help. Well...I'm running BT5 now, and the wireless driver is still not loading.

I'm running BT on an IBM R52 with an Intel 2915ABG wireless card.

When I boot the Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD, this is the dmesg output relative to my wireless card (dmesg | grep ipw2200):

[   61.469514] ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.2kmprq
[   61.469518] ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
[   61.469605] ipw2200 0000:04:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
[   61.469677] ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection
[   61.469727] ipw2200 0000:04:02.0: firmware: requesting ipw2200-bss.fw
[   63.241042] ipw2200: Detected geography ZZA (11 802.11bg channels, 13 802.11a channels)

This is the output when I boot BT 5 32-Bit:

[   10.860321] ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.2kmprq
[   10.860325] ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
[   10.860440] ipw2200 0000:04:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
[   10.860518] ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection
[   11.280505] ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2
[   11.280543] ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
[   11.280568] ipw2200: failed to register network device
[   11.281474] ipw2200 0000:04:02.0: PCI INT A disabled
[   11.281517] ipw2200: probe of 0000:04:02.0 failed with error -5

Any help would be appreciated.

[awells]

Of course once I make the post, I find the solution...

The firmware is being looked for in /lib/firmware. Those files don't exist in BT. An Ubuntu makes some note of it depending on linux-ubuntu-modules or something like that. Anyways...I went to the ipw2200 firmware page, and extracted the files to /lib/firmware. From there, you can reboot or rmmod ipw2200 && modprobe ipw2200 to resolve.

Could this possibly be a bug to report?

eth1      IEEE 802.11abg  ESSID:"HomeN"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.417 GHz  Access Point: 00:1F:33:B3:D7:A6   
          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   Sensitivity=8/0  
          Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:E67B-8423-BFA0-5C1D-2C26-52A7-8D6E-5FF2   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=85/100  Signal level=-45 dBm  Noise level=-91 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

[dec1bel]

I have the exact problem. awells, do you mind telling us which firmware version you downloaded? I'm assuming you downloaded it from http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/. I'll try it in a little bit and report back with results.

Update: I just downloaded the driver for firmware v3.1 at http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php?fid=8. After following awells advice my device now shows up properly. Thanks a lot!

[awells]

Yep, 3.1 is what I used.

[dec1bel]

Okay it didn't solve my problem. My computer now registers the wireless card as eth1 but I get no scan results via wlist and nothing shows up in wicd. I'll keep messing around to find out.

[ogpala]

Using BT5 I went as far as airodump-ng eth1 but there was no AP shown. What did I do wrong? With BT4, I have no issue with this card. Help needed!