Ipw3945 on FC6 Working great!. ....now if only I could connect.

[dva]

I'm dual booting between OpenSuSE 10.1 and FC6. The IPW3945 works perfect in SuSE, all I have to do is enter my password into the keyring manager app after logging in. FC6, on the other hand, is proving to be rather painful exercise. I have poured through the countless posts and replies here and find myself on the wrong side of the “mixed luck” that riddles the forum.
Although I can see all the networks I expect to in NetworkManager, I cannot connect to any of them (including the few unsecured setups out there). I have the gnome-keyring-manager configured the same in both distros so I cannot blame that, especially when I can't connect to an unsecured network. It's either a config issue or the packages I used. I used yum for the ieee80211 and gnome-keyring-manager packages, and pulled down the following packages from freshrpms.net:

ipw3945-firmware-1.13-1.noarch.rpm
ipw3945d-1.7.22-3.i386.rpm
dkms-ipw3945-1.1.0-2.noarch.rpm

The only missing dep was a dkms package which was easy to find and solved the dep issue:
dkms-2.0.13-1.noarch.rpm

The install went pretty smooth and things looked very positive until I tried to connect to my travelrouter and couldn't. I don't use wireless at home but can see all the networks that I usually do. My experience at the office was the same. Yet everything still works perfect in SuSE so it's not a hardware issue.
Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

Edit: for what it's worth, there are no issues at all with the integrated NIC.

[dva]

I have removed the keyring manager, so it's no longer involved. I scooped the text below from /var/log/messages after attempting to connect to an unsecured network.

Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> User Switch: /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/eth0 / linksys
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Deactivating device eth0.
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not found under /com/redhat/dhcp/eth0 for sub-path eth0.dbus.get.reason
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Device eth0 activation scheduled...
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0) started...
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled...
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started...
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) scheduled...
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete.
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) starting...
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0/wireless): access point 'linksys' is unencrypted, no key needed.
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 kernel: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: sending command 'INTERFACE_ADD eth0 wext /var/run/wpa_supplicant '
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: response was 'OK'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: sending command 'AP_SCAN 1'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: response was 'OK'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: sending command 'ADD_NETWORK'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: response was '0'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: sending command 'SET_NETWORK 0 ssid 6c696e6b737973'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: response was 'OK'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: sending command 'SET_NETWORK 0 key_mgmt NONE'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: response was 'OK'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: sending command 'ENABLE_NETWORK 0'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> SUP: response was 'OK'
Nov 27 22:06:27 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) complete.
Nov 27 22:07:07 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0/wireless): association took too long (>40s), failing activation.
Nov 27 22:07:07 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0) failure scheduled...
Nov 27 22:07:07 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0) failed for access point (linksys)
Nov 27 22:07:07 dvat60 NetworkManager: <information> Activation (eth0) failed.

[lsropia]

Dont' lose heart. That is how it is in Linux.

Over 5 years of experience of working only in Linux has taught me one thing. That is, no amount of searching around yields. Nobody can help. At least in my case, the endless searches and doing this and that, including the problem of getting to run ipw3945. The new version may have a solution to this problem, until then use the wired network.

Another thing is that dont' wait if you dont' want to. Again in my case, new Linux version is worth all the wait. Until then keep searching and trying, afterall that is what the Linux is.

Good Luck

[kanishe]

I tried the ipw3945 packages from freshrpms for fc6 x86_64;

ipw3945-firmware-1.13-1
dkms-ipw3945-1.1.3-2
ipw3945d-1.7.22-3

I had the same problem. The problem seems to be that the driver does not set the frequency right and so it will not associate with the AP. It also does not auto scan and associate as other cards I have seen. You can set the parameter with modprobe ipw3945 associate=1 so that it will, or manually set the frequency(channel). The problem I am having now is that occasionally the kernel will oop on the module. Machine is acer 5630 nvidia 7300. Anybody else?

[dealmaker]

Yeah, this problem is killing me. I can see all the non-secure ap but I can't connect to any of them. In the past in FC6, I had problem connecting to secure ap. After several yum update, I can't even connect to non-secure ap now.

[linuxnative]

I installed FC-6 and the 3 files (ipw3945-firmware,ipw3945d, and dkms-ipw3945) and wireless worked flawlessly. Today I've upgraded my harddrive and started installing FC-6, and it doesn't work. I can't even add the wireless card in the Networking control panel. I'm hoping to pinpoint the differences in the 2 installs. I will post up the results.