ipw3945 on fresh Fedora5 installation eating my lunch

[jameswing]

I am attempting to make my built-in wireless work on my new Toshiba Satellite A105-S4074. It uses the Intel ipw 3945 chip. I have been reading the related threads on this board for a couple of weeks and attempting things, but I am getting nowhere. Everything I have read says that I do not have to reinstall the ieee80211 “subsystem”, since it is already “included in the core”. So I have done a # yum install kernel-smp-devel thinking that installs the source headers that are needed for the compilation of the ipw3945 driver(s).

# uname -r
yields 2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smp

when running make in the directory (.../ipw3945-linux-1.1.0/ipw3945-1.1.0) in which I unarchived the ipw3945 driver from Intel, I get the following error:

sed: can't read /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smpnet/ieee80211.h: No such file or directory

ERROR: A compatible subsystem was not found in the following path[s]:

/lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smp /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smp/build

You need to install the ieee80211 subsystem from http://ieee80211.sf.net
and point this build to the location where you installed those sources, eg.:

% make IEEE80211_INC=/usr/src/ieee80211/

or use the 'make patch_kernel' within the ieee80211 subsystem to patch your
kernel sources.

make: *** [check_inc] Error 1

So I did a whole bunch of monkeying around, not understanding what I was doing, and ultimately I found a header file for ieee80211 that may or may not have been part of the original Linux distribution. It is located at /usr/include/ieee80211/net/ieee80211.h. So, I tried "make IEEE80211_INC=/usr/src/ieee80211/"
and got a tiny bit further, but no cigar:

# make IEEE80211_INC=/usr/include/ieee80211/
Using ieee80211 subsystem version '1.2.15' (API v2) from:

Base: /usr/include/ieee80211/
Path: /usr/include/ieee80211/

EXTRA_CFLAGS = -I/usr/include/ieee80211/ -DIEEE80211_API_VERSION=2 -g -Wa,-adhlms=check_inc.lst

make -C /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smp/build M=/root/Desktop/ipw3945-linux-1.1.0/ipw3945-1.1.0 modules
make: *** /build: No such file or directory. Stop.
make: *** [modules] Error 2

which is OK, cause I suspect I had downloaded that source and it is not what is "compiled in the core" anyway. After some more searching and guessing, i tried "make IEEE80211_INC=/lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp/build/include/" and got the following response, which of course means very little to me:

# make IEEE80211_INC=/lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp/build/include/
Using ieee80211 subsystem version 'git-1.1.7' (API v1) from:

Base: /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp/build/include/
Path: /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp/build/include/

EXTRA_CFLAGS = -I/lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp/build/include/ -DIEEE80211_API_VERSION=1 -g -Wa,-adhlms=check_inc.lst

make -C /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smp/build M=/root/Desktop/ipw3945-linux-1.1.0/ipw3945-1.1.0 modules
make: *** /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smp/build: No such file or directory. Stop.
make: *** [modules] Error 2

I think I am really close, but I'm such a newb I don't understand something very basic. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

--jimbo

[jameswing]

Reading another recent post... Is there any chance the only thing I am missing is a link to connect /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smp/build to the real location of the source files for ieee80211? If so, I don't know how to determine where they are, or how to build the link.

I'll be eternally greatful for ANY help.

--Jim

[d3viant]

The ipw3945 drivers are on ATrpms. Do a search of the forums for ATrpms and add that repository. I recommend you keep it disabled, then do yum --enablerepo atrpms install ipw3945*