ipw 3945 Asus U1F - Just another 3945 problem

[itachi]

Hi, ive got an Asus U1F Laptop with a 3945 wlan chipset and Fedora 7/8. I tried both drivers: ipw3945 and iwl3945 (they both show similar behavior).
It is a bit funny, because there are a few wireless networks (including the wlan of the TU Vienna) that i can connect to without any problems, even the vpn secure connection( everything with the NetworkManager), but there are a few (also my wlan at my home) i cannot connect to. The NetworkManager shows some activity, but after a few tries, it just gives up without any error message. I couldn't figure out what the problem is and i also give up for now. Maybe someone out there has an idea. Thx.
Btw: Every now and then ( about 1 out of 20 tries), i can connect to my wlan, although i get disconnected after a few minutes.

[itachi]

too bad. Does no one have any ideas. It is pretty annoying, because my Wlan Router is mounted on the wall unused :(.

[Mack]

Hi itachi,

All I can really offer is sympathy because I'm having the same problems. Fortunately I can connect to my home wlan, but that's about it.

I've tried all of the ideas posted here and elsewhere. I've tried both iwl3945 and ipw3945. I've tried using NetworkManager, wlassitant, wicd, and setting everything up manually (iwconfig, ifconfig, iwlist, dhclient). Nothing really works, and with some wlan's I just plain can't connect. Sadly (for Fedora) my wife's Windows XP laptop has no trouble at all with these. I'd sometimes have trouble under FC5, but nothing like this.

Here are two things that might, maybe help. Sometimes dhclient seems to be confused by having two relevant lease files /var/lib/dhclient/dhclient.leases and /var/lib/dhclient/dhclient-wlan0.leases. Sometimes it helps to delete the second one.

The other thing is even weirder. Sometimes dhclient gets a lease, but I'm not really connected properly. (NetworkManager or wlassistant will say that the connect is successful.) In this case, "ifconfig wlan0" shows that it's been assigned an inet address, but not inet6 address. Beats me. Also, "route" doesn't show a default route, or spins its wheels for a long time and eventually gives one that doesn't work. *Sometimes* it works to set the default route to the wlan inet address that's been assigned: "route add default gw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx", where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the inet address shown by ifconfig.

Obviously something is broken here, but it's really hard to get genuinely reproducible results. And it's hard to figure out who to file a bug against. iwl3945 seems a likely culprit, but, as you said, ipw3945 behaves more or less the same.

[itachi]

Hell yeah, at least someone with the same problem. I've even started ipw3945d with the debug feature (can't remember how to do this). With this, i got a few more messages from the regulatory daemon, but they didn't help either. Btw. the problem seems to be laptop related / chipset related. I've tried Ubuntu and had the exact same problems. Doesn't seem to be a Fedora specific problem (Another reason that i don't need to dump it). If i'm lucky, someone reads this and knows where to file the bugreport.

[Mack]

Hi itachi,

In December I played a lot of option roulette with dhclient and the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. I think I may have found something that helps. I waited to say anything, because several times before I thought I had this all figured out. But no.

Anyway, what I think helps is to create the file /etc/dhclient.conf containing the lines

send host-name "tophat";
default routers 0.0.0.0 ;


The first line is optional. Replace "tophat"---my laptop's hostname---with what you'd like routers to know your computer by. It seems NetworkManager doesn't pick this up from the system -> network (ie, system-config-network) settings that are written to /etc/sysconfig.

The second line is the one that seems to help. It doesn't say anything that dhclient (or NetworkManager) shouldn't already know, but it seems to remind dhclient to set up the default route.

With this configuration file I've managed to connect to four wireless networks that I couldn't before. In every case I had to try several times in various ways (wlassistant, the "ifup" scripts, and NetworkManager). But once I got a lease, even if the connection wasn't usable, I could disconnect and reconnect with Network Manager to get a useable connection. It seems that once NetworkManager has made a usable connection, it remembers and does it without any fuss from then on---even if the original lease has expired.

[itachi]

Dammn. This didn't work either for me :mad:. I'm starting to get very mad about the ipw/iwl 3945/4965 chipsets. The drivers are already available for some time now. Aren't they able to solve this problem. I feel like throwing my laptop out of the 10th floor. :(

[scottro]

Wireless in Linux can often be frustrating.

With my Acer, after days of being unable to get it working, I spent $50 and bought a Linksy WUSB54GC USB stick that worked out of the box. Of course, I finally solved my wireless problems the next day. :)

So, that's one (less than ideal) solution--get some sort of wireless adapter, such as a USB stick, that will work while you try to solve the issue. In the US, they're around $30-50 USD.

[itachi]

OMFG; you won't believe me. My last desperate efforts did pay off (damn .. don't think english people would write like that ... nevermind). Last night i downloaded and compiled the 2.6.24 vanilla kernel with iwl3945 support (i don't really understand why i still have to load the iwl3945 kernel module), but 10min ago i tested the 2.6.24 kernel. After modprobing the iwl3945/mac80211 Kernel modules, i can finally connect to my 2 Wlans and i'm writing this text right now with my laptop. Now it works like a charm. No Wireless problems anymore *wargl*.
Pretty long odyssey. At least i can advise everyone with ipw3945 problems to compile the "new" 2.6.24 Kernel version. Too bad, i don't really understand why this kernel is not troublesome.

[itachi]

One last question ^^:
What possibilities do i have to load the iwl3945/mac80211 kernel modules (during the boot process - automatically). The "normal" way - in /etc/modprobe.conf via alias wlan0 iwl3945 doesn't work for me. It loads the modules but i can't connect to ANY wireless network. I can see the networks (actually the NetworkManager sees them ^^) , but it doesn't connect.
On the other hand, when i load the modules manually via modprobe iwl3945( after booting, without modprobe.conf), i get a connection to my home network (after trying for over 2 months :cool: ).
Any ideas .. maybe delayed loading .. don't know.
Thx