Wifi / KNetworkManager not working on FC7

[RobG]

When I installed FC7 back in September, wi-fi and KNetworkManager worked great. Some time later, it quit working. Being at home and having access to a cabled connection, I didn't much care; I just plugged in a cable and kept working.

Now, I NEED to have wi-fi working in order to get online, and I'm really tired of having to dual boot into Vista.

Basically, I boot up and the little icon in the task tray says KNetworkManager is not running. No matter what i do, it won't run. This is the error I get if I shut it down completely and try to run it manually:

WARNING ** : couldn't connect to dbus session bus: Did not recieve a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

If I try to bring wlan0 up myself with /sbin/ifup wlan0, I get:

SET failed on device wlan0; Invalid argument.

...and it never finds an IP address.

BTW, this is on a Dell Insprion 1520 with the Intel 3945AG wireless adapter. I have SELinux disabled, and I'm fully updated with Kernel 2.6.23.15-80.fc7.

Rob

[nyjetshead]

SET failed on device wlan0; Invalid argument.

I would troubleshoot your wireless device first. It doesn't look like its working.
My guess is you wont find wlan0 when you look in /etc/modprobe.conf

Try yum erase ipw3945-firmware
reboot
Then
yum install ipw3945-firmware
After the driver is installed /sbin/iwconfig
should see wlan0

Confirm you have a wireless device working first before going on to troubleshoot KNM

Edit: ipl3945-firmware not current

[RobG]

wlan is in /etc/modprobe.conf.

Unfortunately, I have NO network connection on that machine so I can't do the remove/reinstall. I've been trying to get ICS on another machine of mine working so I could at least have a cabled connection (via crossover), but while the linux machine does receive an IP from the windows box, it still can't see out. It can't even ping the windows box. That's weird because on my old windows box (which is long gone), it worked great. Hmmm.

Thanks though... that gives me something to work on.

Rob

[bbfuller]

Hello RobG

If you have an un-updated copy of Fedora 7 then you may find that you will have trouble getting the 3945 to work.

During the currency of F7 most of us abandoned the iwl3945 software which didn't work in favour of the earlier ipw3945 software which did.

iwl3945 for me only started working properly in October with the advent of Fedora 8. I think it's now been updated in Fedora 7 as well.

As for KNetworkManager, one thing that can cause it problems is that the underlying NetworkManager service may not be running.

As you've KDE, look in the 'Administration Menu - Services' and see if NetworkManager is started, ticked to start at boot, and saved so that it does.

[RobG]

I think that's when my wireless quit working... it must have been when ipw went away and iwl came in. I'm not sure what you mean by un-updated... I'm fully updated with yum. Is there a way to get ipw back? I have no plans to go to F8; I tried it on another machine and it was so buggy that I decided not to replace my F7 installation with it. I'll wait for F9.

Network manager is set to run at start time, and all of my network interfaces are configured... lo. eth0 and wlan0. But wlan0 is not active, and attempting to activate it brings up those errors I mentioned in the original post.

Rob

[nyjetshead]

Robg,

I checked the repository and as bbfuller stated ipw3945 is current and if you updated you must have kmod-ipw3945 on your system.
When you updated did you update the firmware as well, might want to verify this.

[bbfuller]

Hello RobG

If you have an un-updated copy of Fedora 7 then you may find that you will have trouble getting the 3945 to work.

That was a fairly general statement because I wasn't sure just how up to date you copy of F7 was.

The situation as I see it is this.

When Fedora 7 came out it used the iwl3945 driver, and looking in the original Fedora 7 repositories here:

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...386/os/Fedora/

the firmware released at that time to go with the card was something called "iwlwifi-firmware-2.14.3-2.noarch.rpm".

A lot of people including me could not get our card to work with that combination and turned instead to the ipw3945 modules and firmware from the ATRPMS repository.

If you didn't specifically enable one of the rarer Fedora third party repositories, blacklist the iwl3945 software and use the ipw in its stead then you were one of the rare people for whom the original iwl3945 worked.

When Fedora 8 came out it had updated iwl3945 software with a specific firmware package, iwl3945-firmware-2.14.1.5-1.noarch.rpm. The actual numbers may not be the same but the principle holds good.

This newer iwl3945-firmware-2.14.1.5-1.noarch.rpm filtered down into the Fedora 7 repositories sometime in September/October.

A simple:

rpm -q iwl3945-firmware

will confirm that you have it.

NetworkManager has also changed a lot during the currency of Fedora 8 and has presumably filtered down to 7 and one thing concerns me about your setup.

You say:

and attempting to activate it brings up those errors I mentioned in the original post

If you are using NetworkManager, you must not try to control the card from the "Administration - Network" dialogue which is identified on its title bar as "Network Configuration". There are two different ways of controlling a wireless card in Fedora and unfortunately they conflict with each other.

If Network Configuration is set to start your card at boot time then NetworkManager won't get a chance. But if NetworkManager is trying to control your card the Network Configuration won't be able to.

Try going into KDE main menu - Administration Menu - Network, highlight your card and click "Edit". Make sure that "Activate Device when Computer Starts" is NOT ticked and that "Controlled by NetworkManager" (if it is there) is ticked. Reboot the machine and try the card again from the KNetworkManager applet in the Notification Area of the Panel.

[RobG]

Okay, I made sure I have that package (it's there), and I went into admin -network and made sure that the card isn't set to start with the computer (it wasn't). There's no option to control with kde network manager.

When I try to activate it, I still get that "set failed on device wlan0; invalid argument" and it is never able to obtain an IP address, and says "cannot activate network device wlan0.

Rob

[bbfuller]

Hello RobG

I'm not sure how you are trying to control this card to see those messages.

If you were using NetworkManager I wouldn't expect any messages, just success or failure. Can you clarify what steps you have used and if you have been able to try KNetworkManager.

I'd also suggest that you try it from a Fedora 8 live cd if you have the time, patience and broadband allowance to download it. My 3945 would not work on Fedora 7, though I didn't have all the updates at that time. It worked straight away from Fedora 8. That's not a universal experience though.