Re: How to wifi with ipw3945 on Dell Vostro ???

[Michael Shuler <michael@pbandjelly.org>]

On 10/11/2007 10:11 AM, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> I've been watching for some action on this thread as I have the same
> chip giving me fits. It appears that I have to use the built-in keys
> to turn the radio off and then back on to get it to actually wake up
> and connect. Its been a little frustrating. I've also found Network
> Manager to be unpredictable if not down right impossible to use. It
> seems to be too smart for its own good sometimes. 
> 
> I've ended up having to use a different tool: wifi-radar and (shudder)
> rebooting to get wireless to work. Typically, the dance I had to go
> (this was on a cross coutnry trip -- different wireless in each hotel)
> through was down all the interfaces, comment out the wired ethernet
> from /etc/network/interfaces, reboot, then use wifi-radar to connect
> entering appropriate keys etc. Sometimes I'd have to manually shutdown
> the radio (as above) and bring it back up to get it to go.
> 
> I'm not convinced that my problems are necessarily with the
> driver/interface but that cycling the radio thing suggests it might
> be. 
> 
> I'm planning to wipe that lappy and start over anyway (need to use
> encryption) so I'll start over from scratch on the wireless. If I get
> anything useful I'll post it up.

I simply use the interfaces file with mapping for the various wireless
networks I use, and a script with 'iwlist eth1 scan' to figure out which
AP I am in range of.

I do not recall where I stumbled across this setting, but it definitely
helped my issues with connecting to some APs from my T60 w/ipw3945.  I
added the 'associate=1' option to the module load, and all was well:

$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/ipw3945d
install ipw3945 modprobe --ignore-install ipw3945 associate=1 &&
/etc/init.d/ipw3945d modprobe-start
remove  ipw3945 /etc/init.d/ipw3945d modprobe-stop && modprobe -r
--ignore-remove ipw3945

-- 
Kind Regards,
Michael