Intel 3945ABG issue - have stepped through troubleshooting

English Network/Internet
1

Hi, I’ve just installed openSUSE v11.1 on two different laptops and have managed to get wireless working on one of them, but not the other. They both have the same wireless card - Intel 3945ABG. I’m new to openSUSE and have searched the forums and followed the troubleshooting guide on this forum, but alas i can’t solve the problem and am turning to you guys for help!

The laptop which I can’t enable wireless on is a Fujitsu Amilo, if that info is of any use. The laptop which works picked up the wireless network straight away, while on the other one, I have used KNetworkManager to enter my SSID and set up the connection, however, it does not even try to connect when i click Connect and Save. Under wlan0, I have the message Wireless Disabled.

In the output of dmesg, I have this line:

iwl3945: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill Switch

In the output of iwconfig, I have:

wlan0 IEEE 802.llabg ESSID:""
Mode: Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=0 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal Level:0 Noise Level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

In the output of iwlist scan i get:

wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning : Network is down

Output of lspci -v

Network Controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 002)
Subsystem: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection
Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 18
Memory at fa000000 (32 bit, non prefetchable) [size=4]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: iwl3945
Kernel modules: iwl3945

If anyone can see what the issue is, i’d be grateful for any help. Thanks in advance[/size]

2

nicky77 wrote:

> iwl3945: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill Switch

What kind of RFKILL switch does your laptop have? In any case, the
switch is turning the radio off. Until you get the switch flipped, the
wifi will not work.

3

Thanks for the reply - is there a specific command which will tell me what type of RFKILL switch i have? I’ve checked in BIOS and the wireless device is set to Enabled there. Apologies if this is basic stuff, pretty new to Linux.

4

nicky77 wrote:
> Thanks for the reply - is there a specific command which will tell me
> what type of RFKILL switch i have? I’ve checked in BIOS and the wireless
> device is set to Enabled there. Apologies if this is basic stuff, pretty
> new to Linux.

Look at your computer.

5

The way to switch on wireless on my laptop is with Fn + F1, which worked with Windows but doesn’t work with Linux. In Ubuntu, some people have resolved this issue using

sudo rmmod -f iwl3945
sudo modprobe iwl3945 disable_hw_scan=1

but this didn’t work for me.

6

There is an interface for laptops to control those buttons that do not
generate a keycode that is called Windows Management Interface, or
WMI. At present, Linux has such drivers for HP and Acer, but not
Fujitsu. There is, however, a module that handles some features on the
Fujitsu units. You should ‘modprobe fujitsu-laptop’ and see where it
leads. I’m not too hopeful as the file it creates in /sys is read-only.

If you wish to check on the status of any WMI routines, you should
write to Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>. He has written several
of those now in the kernel.

Larry