Fedora sees ipw3945 wireless card as ethernet

[EVFX]

Hi all,

For the past few days I've been trying everything I can to get my ipw3945 wireless card working on my laptop. I've tried various different solutions, and now I feel like I'm so close but still so far away. I have installed the ATRPM ipw3945 packages, done a modprobe ipw3945 and started the ipw3945d daemon.

My problem now seems to be that Fedora is seeing my wireless card as an ethernet device. When I try to create a new wireless connection, the card will not appear as a usable device.

Does anybody have any idea how I can fix this problem?
Frustratingly, my card worked with Ubuntu right away. I really hated that distro, though. I really want to keep my Fedora.

[JEO]

You said you have the ipw3945 driver and daemon but you didn't mention if you have the firmware package installed? I believe that package has to be installed for the driver to work right. Also I was looking at freshrpms version of the driver, you might try those.

[EVFX]

Right now what I have installed are the ipw9345, ipw3945d and ipw3945-kmdl packages from ATRMPS. I'll have to try downloading and installing the FreshRPMS firmware package as well.

So far I've tried installing the FreshRPMS packages, a mix of that and ATRPMS that somebody posted recently in another threas, then just the ATRPMS packages. I'm thinking about trying to compile the drivers/firmware from source if all else fails.

[JEO]

You also may want to post what happens in /var/log/messages when you modprobe the driver that might give a clue as to what is going on.

[EVFX]

Well, it actually doesn't generate any error messages when I modprobe the driver. The only message I get about the card at all is on bootup it gives me the lines:

Dec 31 14:11:22 skyline kernel: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - version 7.1.9-k4-NAPI
Dec 31 14:11:22 skyline kernel: Copyright (c) 1999-2006 Intel Corporation.

It really seems like it should be working, but Fedora still only identifies the card as an ethernet device and won't allow me to do a wireless configuration on it. I tried installing the firmware package from FreshRPMS but the situation did not change. I also instaled the ieee80211 package from ATRPMS after the firmware didn't help and still nothing.

It's really confusing me, I can't find anything to point me in the direction of the problem.

[JEO]

> Dec 31 14:11:22 skyline kernel: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - version 7.1.9-k4-NAPI
> Dec 31 14:11:22 skyline kernel: Copyright (c) 1999-2006 Intel Corporation.

That is the output you should get if you do a modprobe e1000 which is an ethernet driver module that comes with Fedora not the wireless driver that you installed. See if you can do an lsmod to determine if the new kernel module is loaded or not and try to increase the debug options for the driver to get some output when it loads.

[EVFX]

Alright I'm making progress now. I took out all the packages, did nice thorough cleaning. I wet back and installed just the ATRPMS packages. It recognized the card as wireless and was able to detect the local network, but was not able to actually connect. I took them all out again to see if the FreshRPMS would hav better luck and that came back the same. At least the computer is recognizing my card now. Probably just too much stuff going on, I think. Hopefully there will be some info on how to fix the connection problem on the forums.

I'm happy to have made progress, though :)
Thanks for the help so far! Hopefully from here it'll all be downhill *crosss fingers*

[JEO]

Glad to hear you made real progress, you're welcome :)