Thinkpads Forum

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:03 am**

Hi all,

I have run into a peculiar problem. I have the following:
A Lenovo Thinkpad T60 2623D6U with the Intel 3945ABG wireless lan chip.

I have gotten everything to work (except the ThinkVantage stuff) but for the life of me I cant get the system to even _see_ wlan0. The BIOS is the default setting except for the boot order, everything in the network category is enabled.

Some useful outputs:

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$ lspci
...
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

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$ lshw -C network
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
...
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=e1000 ip=192.168.0.6 multicast=yes
resources: iomemory:ee000000-ee01ffff ioport:3000-301f irq:169
*-network
description: Network controller
product: [b]PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection[/b]
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@03:00.0
...
capabilities: bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=ipw3945
resources: iomemory:edf00000-edf00fff irq:74

So as you can see it does detect the hardware. And the ipw3945 drivers are also setup so that I dont have to rebuild the kernel (as I understand it, if I am off on this please let me know)
However:

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$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
irda0 no wireless extensions.
sit0 no wireless extensions.

and

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$ ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:41:E1:06:EF
inet addr:192.168.0.6 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::216:41ff:fee1:6ef/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1492 Metric:1
RX packets:4356 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:3644 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:4679149 (4.4 MiB) TX bytes:530226 (517.7 KiB)
Base address:0x3000 Memory:ee000000-ee020000

irda0 Link encap:IrLAP HWaddr 00:00:00:00
...

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
...

sit0 Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
NOARP MTU:1480 Metric:1
....

the network system does not seem to pick it up.

What I tried:

1. Per http://www.linux.org.mt/node/82 (i think - the original source of the thinkwiki article) I installed network-manager and network-manager-gnome. I get the icon on the bottom right, however it doesn't show the wireless options. Perhaps a different model issue. So no-go on that solution.

2. Downloaded XP Pro driver from intel, and used ndiswrapper to install it. Everything went smoothly, however no wlan0 created in /etc/network/interfaces. So basically I can install the driver but can't use it. And so I cant ifup it. Cant add it to the list and ifup after that. Cant do pretty much anything regarding wlan0. So no-go there too.

Also tried above numerous times with everything network in BIOS enabled. Also tried pressing Fn+F5 (radio on) and make it work. Nothing happened - tried it numerous times.

What I have not tried:

1. Use the open-source drivers. I don't think I will be trying that because per the instructions that requires a kernel rebuild and I don't want to have to do that every time I upgrade my kernel. Also:

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$ lsmod | grep ipw
ipw3945        124567  0
ieee80211      35272   1  ipw3945

and a

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dmesg | grep 3945

clearly shows that it detected it.

I was wondering if there are any network gurus out there, who can help out with this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
AM

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:58 am**

I have the same setup, a T60-2623-D6U running Ubuntu 6.10. For me everything works so hopefully I'll be able to help you through getting yours to work.

Seeing that ifconfig -a and iwconfig only show you your wired ethernet (eth0) you will have to likely install the driver for the Intel Wireless Card.

I know that you have tried ndiswrapper but I would suggest using the Linux drivers which I think are actually open source (but could be wrong) for the T60. That is what I am using and they work very well.

I believe that the drivers that you require is in the linux-restricted-modules package. You should be able to install this with the command: "sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r)". The spelling may be off but it should be all that is needed for the restricted modules. This should make the wireless radio show up as eth1.

Hopefully, this should be enough to get you going. If not, just let me know I can also help you out with configuring it or what have you once you get the device to show up.

Good luck, the T60 and Ubuntu has been the easiest Linux install so far. One word of warning though, don't disable your modem in the bios, it will also disable the sound card in Ubuntu (it still gets detected though, just can't be used.)

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 5:56 am**

aseem: Did you turn the wlan kill-switch off? You need to have ipw3945d running; ipw3945d is responsible for creating the device and removing it when you turn the kill-switch on.

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:10 pm**

Thanks for the prompt response mojito. I actually thought that I had the ipw3945d daemon, but per:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/li ... +bug/62452

apparently not. I also thought that I had installed the linux-restricted-modules-generic package as part of the process to get fglrx drivers for ati going... but apparently not.

Anyhoo.. after installing that it works beutifully, man I love these boxen.

BTW where is the wlan kill-switch.

Thanks again for the nudge in the right direction..

AM

Thinkpads Forum

T60 2623D6U wireless Intel 3945abg Ubuntu 6.10

T60 2623D6U wireless Intel 3945abg Ubuntu 6.10