I followed the sticky about setting up wireless and I have come to an issue where the WLAN switch which is on this computer can be pressed, the light comes on, but no WLAN. When I looked in dmesg, this is what I get:
ipw2100: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Connection
firmware: requesting ipw2100-1.3.fw
eth0: Radio is disabled by RF switch.
When running iwconfig wlan0 heres what I get:
home/j-dub # iwconfig eth0
wlan0 unassociated ESSID off/any Nickname:“ipw2100”
Mode:Managed Channel=0 Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power off
Retry short limit:7 RTS throff Fragment thr off
Encryption key off
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
Notice it says that the ‘Radio is disabled by switch’ in dmesg. I can press that switch until the end of the world comes and it does absolutely nothing but make the WLAN light put on a light show. And it shows the wlan to be unassociated with any clients. So, what are my options to get this Wireless up and working? I have already looked into the ‘getting your wireless to work’ thread and there is nothing there to help. Give me some advice please.
Computer/OS info:
Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo M7400
1.4GHz Intel Centrino R
40GB HD
Suse 11.1 KDE
ipw2100: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Connection
firmware: requesting ipw2100-1.3.fw
ipw2100: eth0: Firmware ‘ipw2100-1.3.fw’ not available or load failed.
ipw2100: eth0: ipw2100_get_firmware failed: -2
ipw2100: eth0: Failed to power on the adapter.
ipw2100: eth0: Failed to start the firmware.
See,s as if the firmware and drivers are gone as well as ndiswrapper. The connection does appear to be in ‘online mode’ in NetManager, but the named connection does not appear. When i right click onto NetManager, it shows only a cable connection present. When I go to edit connections, it shows a wireless connection present. I can edit the connection, try to connect and save, but it still gives me no WLAN. Bummer.
I would say that since the ip2100 is recognised, you don’t need any extra drivers or modules.
I seem to remember when I was trying to get my acer 290 working that some fujitsu models also use acerhk to control the wireless switch.
It’s in the software.opensuse.org/search.
Look at this thread on how to enable it: Intel Pro Wireless 2200 on Acernote 290 - openSUSE Forums
Make sure that if there is a wireless switch on the notebook that it is set to on.
Another thing is to search for you notebook model and enable wireless.
Might work with Amilo 7400, but not sure, acerhk-packages exist on OBS (though obviously unmaintained for updated kernels).
Fun thing is, the OP already was on the right track, but instead of doing exactly what he was told (remove ndiswrapper and Windows drivers) he obviously removed the firmware for linux, too (which was installed by default, and could have been reinstalled easily, if he had followed my link to google search).
Don’t know, if he actually installed the matching fsam7400-packages (fsam7400 + fsam7400-kmp-$flavor), as -by coincidence- I did only a few weeks ago on some friend’s laptop and it worked as expected, but now it’s too late anyway, because -by another stroke of coincidence- I removed fsam7400 from my repos yesterday, so if acerhk does not do the trick, he will have to search, patch and compile fsam7400 for himself.
I own an Amilo M7400 with the Intel PRO 2100 wireless.
Its currently running openSUSE-11.1. Before then it was running 11.0, 10.3, 10.2, 10.1, 9.3 …
Wireless has always “just worked” on this laptop, except for maybe 9.3 where I vaguely recall having to update the BIOS … In every case starting with 10.1 I simply installed openSUSE and the wireless functioned.
I’m surprised at j-dub’s problems, because wireless is really good with this old laptop. Unfortunately I do not know enough about this to offer a suggestion … But I do know this is NOT a nominal laptop hardware compatibility problem nor is it a nominal openSUSE problem if everything is configured correctly (ie default settings work).
That BIOS update fixed this Bug (Yes, this is a Bug if ACPI events are not implemented by the standard ways on every compliant OS but by some strange OS-Software acting as the 50 cent part, a real switch would have been).
or
There are several, different “Amilo M7400” around and the vendor has a brain dead naming schmeme (like i.e. some “Wireless Vendors”) where different machines have (practically) the same name (sometimes with an innocent “revX” behind it, but not always).
@Akoellh
After replying to this thread, I did a bit of googling and found acerhk works with his notebook as well as a few others. Seems like Acer supplies equipment to other manufacturers to rebrand.
I also found references to fsam7400, but they were from older posts.
Strange thing is that if you try intel’s own kernel modules for the IntelPRO, the 2100 and 2200 are the same and are now built into the newer kernels … So he never needed the ndiswrapper in the first place.
Maybe, but, there are only very few “real” hardware vendors, especially when it’s about BIOS, so most likely those “other vendors” buy the same parts for their laptops (and not really from Acer).
Yes, that’s why I told him to uninstall it in my first answer.
(That he was using ndiswrapper was pretty clear on seeing the “wlan0”, ipw2x00 gives an “ethX” by default, so actually I tried to fix what he already broke.)
Indeed, I have never used the ndiswrapper on this laptop.
For everyone on this thread, my wife typically keeps this laptop at the organization where we both work, so for exercise on this Good Friday holiday, we walked into the office, picked up the laptop, and brought it back home. I’m going to plug it in to the Internet and update its openSUSE-11.1 software, and while I do that, if there are any configuration files I can check, please advise.
I will have the laptop until Monday, when either Monday afternoon, or 1st thing Tuesday morning, I will likely need to return the laptop to the office, and I will no longer have access.
And of course unlike the pure motherboard vendors who supply regular bios updates, notebook/laptop vedors seem to forget to support them as soon as their newest version is released.
It’s a pity nobody supplies a standard laptop case and a range of components so you can build your own in the same way as you can with a desktop.
This would really bring down the prices of new laptops.
I’m currently updating about 300MB of Packman packaged rpms in the background as I type this. Internet is working well on this wireless. In fact this Intel Pro 2100 wireless always worked better on Linux than WinXP on this laptop.
