
Hi all,
In my job, I use a laptop dell d600, with a mini pci wireless card Intel LAN 2100.
02:03.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (rev 04)
The default debian kernel support this hardware, but you need some additional files(firmware) to wlan work right. These files doesn’t came with default debian kernel, so you can easily use your wlan doing the steps below.
Problem:
dmesg
Output:
…
ipw2100: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Connection
ipw2100: eth1: Firmware ‘ipw2100-1.3.fw’ not available or load failed.
ipw2100: eth1: ipw2100_get_firmware failed: -2
ipw2100: eth1: Failed to power on the adapter.
ipw2100: eth1: Failed to start the firmware.
ipw2100Error calling register_netdev.
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:02:03.0 disabled
ipw2100: probe of 0000:02:03.0 failed with error -5
…
Solution:
Download the last firmware at:
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/firmware.php
Uncompress the tarball file.
tar -xvzf ipw2100-fw-1.3.tgz
It’s going to generate:
LICENSE
ipw2100-1.3.fw
ipw2100-1.3-i.fw
ipw2100-1.3-p.fw
Create a directory with to store the firmware files.
sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/
sudo cp ipw2100-* /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/.
Reload the kernel module with related with wlan.
sudo rmmod ipw2100
sudo modprobe ipw2100
Your procedure is correct if you found the message below when you execute dmesg.
…
ipw2100: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Driver, 1.2.2
ipw2100: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
PCI: Enabling device 0000:02:03.0 (0110 -> 0112)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:03.0[A] -> Link [LNKB] -> GSI 5 (level, low) -> IRQ 5
ipw2100: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Connection
…
Install wireless tools to check wlan interfaces.
sudo apt-get install wireless-tools
Checking the wlan interfaces.
iwconfig
Output:
…
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
sit0 no wireless extensions.
eth1 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:”WANO” Nickname:”ipw2100″
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:13:60:17:3D:60
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=81/100 Signal level=-77 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:2737 Missed beacon:4
…
References:
http://jrblevin.freeshell.org/linux/ipw2100/
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/firmware.php