I feel bad that I can not contribute more, given I have what could be the same laptop, with this functioning properly. But my knowledge of wireless quirks is far too weak.
I do note this rpm:
oldcpu@fujitsu-laptop:~> rpm -qa '*ipw*'
ipw-firmware-8-67.9
I note this version of the kernel is not the most recent for 11.1. I am going to go ahead and update it to 2.6.27.45-0.1.1 kernel, as I assume it will make no difference in the investigations on this thread. It appears j-dub has installed 11.2 on this laptop (which is not easy by the way, due to its Intel 855GM graphics: Intel 855GM graphics problems w/openSUSE-11.2s 2.6.31 kernel - openSUSE Forums ). 11.2 needs the acpi=off option to boot as near as I was able to determine, and for all I know, even with the ipw firmware, that acpi=off necessary option for 11.2 could impact the wireless behaviour. I did not want to risk that, so I stayed on 11.1 on this laptop.
… no dramas with the kernel update on 11.1. I now have the 2.6.27.45 kernel on this Fujitsu Siemens Amilo 7400M laptop, and wireless with the Intel Pro 2100 is still working great.
oldcpu,
I have 11.2 now on this bad boy, but earlier 11.1 and the wireless did not work on either version. I even tried using 11.0 and still no difference. I did try a dual boot with windows xp and the wireless works on windows xp but when booting up Suse in any version, the wireless wont work. The device output you have posted is exactly the same as mine. when I post the output of dmesg, you will see in the output that it says wireless is disabled by RF radio switch. I tried fsam7400 and it does not work, tried to use windows drivers in ndiswrapper, didn’t work. I also tried going to the RF kill switch website on SourceForge and it did not work either. I have gotten acpi to work before on Suse 11.2, but it is a pain is the @ss. Is it possible guys that acpi is causing this on 11.2? If it is, then why is it when I have acpi on 11.1 the wireless remains an issue? Today I will test a wireless USB stick and see what the outcome is. Maybe it will work. But I still want to continue to try out different things to solve this wireless issue with the Intel card. Let me know what you guys discover, but as far as the card, it is exact, Intel PRO Wireless 2100 3B and its a Centrino.
First can you provide the output of
rpm -qa '*ipw*'
because I would like to confirm you have the ipw-firmware-8-109.2.noarch.rpm that provides the necessary firmware. Without that rpm I do not believe wireless (with the integrated Intel hardware) will work on this laptop. Your laptop needs it.
As noted, I decided NOT to install 11.2 on this laptop because of concerns with the Intel graphics with the 2.6.31 kernel (see this thread: Intel 855GM graphics problems w/openSUSE-11.2s 2.6.31 kernel - openSUSE Forums )
And I wrote a bug report on the graphics on this laptop for openSUSE-11.3 Milestone4 here: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=593463
It does work, believe me, I would search the error on Layer8.
It is possible, but by no means certain, that acpi could be causing a problem with wireless on 11.2. I never got far enough on 11.2 to test wireless with this laptop.
I do know wireless works and works well on this laptop with 11.1. It works BETTER in Linux than winXP in terms of signal reception stability.
I’m very suspicious that you have NOT installed the firmware rpm because of this from your dmesg:
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.
oldcpu,
its as plain as can be here in this output:
j-dub@linux-w7f7:~> rpm -qa ‘ipw’
ipw-firmware-8-109.2.noarch
its there and I think you are right, it IS acpi affecting it. I tried to get it working on 11.1 and it worked after firmware was installed. But it still wont work on 11.2 as the acpi needs to be off to get a complete install of suse 11.2. The only way to install 11.2 on this laptop is to have acpi set to off and DO NOT DO auto configuration! Afterwards, the install comes cleanly, does not hang or anything, and suse boots great. I will continue to do some troubleshooting in 11.2 to see if i can get the acpi to install somehow with a clean install of suse 11.2. As of today, I bought a DLink/Railink Air Plus G 54G USB WLAN stick (Model DWL-G122) and only needed to drop rt73.bin to lib/firmware and I have wireless at blazing speed. But that matters not. I still want to solve this issue and see what comes of it. But I do think you are right, acpi is affecting wireless on 11.2.
Check this out, From dmesg output:
10.613585] ipw2100 0000:02:06.0: found PCI INT A -> IRQ 10
10.614468] ipw2100: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Connection
10.614493] ipw2100 0000:02:06.0: firmware: requesting ipw2100-1.3.fw
10.749320] eth0: Radio is disabled by RF switch.
Mind you that the WLAN light is ALWAYS on, wireless is activated in BIOS, and the switch does not function at all when pressed. The light remains on and only blinks when the button is pressed, but the button does not activate the wireless at all. with the fsam7400, the light remained OFF all the time, with the wireless activated in BIOS and the button still did nothing when pressed. So we have two possible things here…
Maybe using a Live KDE CD and trying out the wireless before installing the OS via Live CD would work?? In trying it out by a Live CD isn’t acpi working then?
My guess is the latter.
Good on ya for trying, but if it were me, I would roll back to 11.1 for not only the wireless, but ALSO for the graphics. Even with acpi=OFF, on 11.2 I think you don’t have special desktop effects. I get special desktop effects on 11.1. I’m staying on 11.1 on my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo 7400M. On 11.1 I’ve updated KDE to 4.3.4 on that laptop, and likely tonight or tomorrow I’ll bring it up to KDE-4.3.5. KDE runs nice on this laptop.
If you plan to stay on openSUSE-11.2, then I recommend you immediately write a bug report on this Intel Pro-100 wireless, noting the Intel Pro 2100 wireless appears not to work with ACPI=OFF, and the only way to get openSUSE to install is via ACPI=OFF. You can also cite this bug report for a reference for the laptop only booting with ACPI OFF https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=555619 .
Then track your bug report on 11.2 see if anything comes of it.
There is guidance here for raising bug reports:
Submitting Bug Reports - openSUSE
You can use your forum user name and your forum password to login to bugzilla. You need to post all relevant information in the bug report as it is very unlikely that the packagers at SuSE-GmbH will read a forum thread. However the advantage of the bug report is this problem is brought to the attention of the SuSE-GmbH packagers who may or may not be able to propose better workarounds.
You could also book mark and track another new bug report on this Amilo 7400M laptop on openSUSE-11.3 milestone4 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=593463 that I raised (and possibly you could support any resolution attempts, but I think there will not be any attempts to solve the problem in SuSE-GmbH as the problem is upstream)
As for testing from the liveCD, I don’t know how. The rpm ipw-firmware is not on the live CD. It has to be copied to the PC after the live CD boots, which means the firmware is not loaded upon boot, but rather has to be installed after boot, and frankly I do know know if that will work.
Possibly it can be loaded during run level 1, but that is beyond my expertise to do (and that is wild speculation by me).
I take it then you NO LONGER see this in your dmesg:
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.
Reference this dmesg that you get:
As noted, I am no wireless guru. Far from it … ie just the opposite.
Here is what I get in my Amilo 7400M (with Intel Pro 2100 wiress) dmesg during boot:
ipw2100: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Driver, git-1.2.2
ipw2100: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
.............
ipw2100 0000:02:06.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKG] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10
ipw2100: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Connection
firmware: requesting ipw2100-1.3.fw
..............
..............
SFW2-INext-DROP-DEFLT IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:00:1f:3f:22:4e:05:08:00 SRC=192.168.2.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x80 TTL=1 ID=0 DF OPT (94040000) PROTO=2
SFW2-INext-DROP-DEFLT IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:fb:00:26:55:f0:82:23:08:00 SRC=192.168.2.107 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=6455 OPT (94040000) PROTO=2
I did a search for “radio” and “switch” and there is no such entry in my dmesg.
You say this in past tense. Does that mean MS-Windows is no longer installed (and hence can not be used to check) ? I am not 100% clear that you now have had this working on openSUSE-11.1. Your above post suggests that you may have. If you have not this working on 11.1 and you are still curious of the Intel Pro 2100 is functional, then you could dig up an OLD knoppix live DVD (preferably one with the 2.6.24 kernel (knoppix 5.3.1) or the 2.6.28 kernel (knoppix 6.0.1) as either of those two may have ipw-firmware on the live DVD and you may be able to test a boot with those. Don’t go for the latest knoppix as it will NOT boot this laptop due to issues with the graphics and kernel.
Sorry, I have no more openSUSE suggestions. IMHO if you wish to stay with openSUSE and use wireless , your options are
… I’m starting to think the next openSUSE I put on this laptop will be 12.0.
On 04/03/2010 02:06 PM, oldcpu wrote:
> As for testing from the liveCD, I don’t know how. The rpm ipw-firmware
> is not on the live CD. It has to be copied to the PC after the live CD
> boots, which means the firmware is not loaded upon boot, but rather has
> to be installed after boot, and frankly I do know know if that will
> work.
>
> Possibly it can be loaded during run level 1, but that is beyond my
> expertise to do (and that is wild speculation by me).
Copy the firmware to some portable device, or have it on some partition
on the disk. Once the Live CD has finished booting, open a terminal and
mount whatever device has the firmware. Copy that to /lib/firmware under
the appropriate name. If you then ‘modprobe -r’ and ‘modprobe’ the
driver, the firmware will be available and you can make a connection. I
don’t have any Intel hardware, but I have done the above for both b43
and p54usb.
By default, ipw-firmware is installed automatically (since at least 10.2, maybe even 10.0 not sure) if a ipw2x00-device is detected.
If not deleted manually, the files will be there, if not, ipw-firmware will be available either from DVD/CD or from non-oss repo (download + transfer to machine via $EXTERNAL_STORAGE) for offline installation (rpm, zypper choose your poison).
Please, as a sanity check, examine your Amilo 7400M BIOS. Please double check in the “BIOS advanced” that “Default Wireless Device” is Enabled.
As a test, I booted my Amilo 7400M with the Intel Pro 2100 wireless to the openSUSE-11.2 KDE4 liveCD, with the boot option acpi=off.
I noted on the liveCD is the rpm ipw-firmware-8-109.2.noarch.rpm and so **my earlier statement **(about ipw-firmware not being on the 11.2 liveCD was wrong).
when I went to YaST to activate the network (disabling the Network manager and selecting the traditional method) the laptop froze when “writing Firewall settings” while “Activating Network Services … “
I performed a hard power OFF, and rebooted the liveCD (again with acpi=off). This time I looked in the dmesg and I saw:
45.777932] ipw2100: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Driver, git-1.2.2
45.778312] ipw2100: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
45.780199] ipw2100 0000:02:06.0: found PCI INT A -> IRQ 10
45.782114] ipw2100: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Connection
45.782540] ipw2100 0000:02:06.0: firmware: requesting ipw2100-1.3.fw
275.012166] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
275.007131] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth1: link is not ready
I did NOT see your
10.749320] eth0: Radio is disabled by RF switch.
there is no sign of that on my Amilo.
I then installed the rpm ipw-firmware-9-3.1.noarch.rpm to replace the older version on the liveCD (copied via USB stick).
Then, while not really knowing what I was doing (and I had not yet read lwfinger’s recommendation), I unloaded the ipw2100 module and reloaded it with
rmmod ipw2100
modprobe ipw2100
I can try this again using “modprobe -r” and “modprobe” if it is better.
I then again went to YaST to activate the network (disabling the Network manager and selecting the traditional method) and again the laptop froze when “writing Firewall settings” while “Activating Network Services … “ . Again, only a hard power OFF would work.
So clearly I was not able to get the wireless working on 11.2 with the LiveCD. I’m NOT willing to install 11.2 on this laptop to test any deeper.
I still think 11.1 is a better openSUSE version to run on this laptop. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big openSUSE-11.2 fan and have it running on 5 PCs and its better on those 5 PCs than 11.1. But in the case of this Amilo 7400M, I think 11.1 is better.
Of note, thou, is I do NOT get the error:
10.749320] eth0: Radio is disabled by RF switch.
Ok I tried it again using the ipw-firmware-9-3.1.noarch.rpm rpm and also “modprobe -r ipw2100” and “modprobe ipw2100” and instead of using the traditional method in YaST, I used knetworkmanager ( ? ) in 11.2.
The wireless works. So I am afraid it won’t be much of a bug report that I proposed you raise as there is no bug (except for the traditional ifup method freezing). My apologies for misleading you. This simply illustrates what I noted at the start - which is I know next to nothing about wireless
So, the Intel Pro 2100 wireless works on this Amilo 7400M under openSUSE-11.2.
I’m thinking you have a hardware problem.
I forgot to mention …I am typing this post from the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo 7400M laptop with the Intel Pro 2100 wireless with no wired cable connection running the openSUSE-11.2 KDE4 liveCD - the only connection is the wireless connection to our family router.
If this is not a bad BIOS setting, and if you are certain the wireless switch is in the correct position, then IMHO you have a hardware problem. I never once saw the “Radio is disabled by RF switch” error that you reported.
Now that I know openSUSE-11.2 wireless works on this Amilo 7400M with the Intel Pro 2100, I thought I would take some openSUSE-11.2 liveCDs “for a spin” with this laptop.
I’m currently typing this from the openSUSE-11.2 community LXDE liveCD using the Amilo 7400M’s Intel Pro 2100 wireless. To get the wireless working on the laptop with this liveCD I had to install (via a USB stick copied previous from the internet) the rpms iw-0.9.18-3.1.i586.rpm and ipw-firmware-9-3.1.noarch.rpm . And then do the “modprobe -r ipw2100” followed by “modprobe 2100” to unload/reload the ipw2100 kernel module. There is no networkmanager on this minimal liveCD, so I had to go to YaST and configure wireless via the traditional method. To my surpise YaST did NOT freeze here, where as with the KDE liveCD it frooze. So wireless works here from LXDE as well.
Of course I had to boot openSUSE-11.2 on this laptop with the option acpi=off in order for the graphics to work, and I do not like using that boot option on a laptop.
I note LXDE is fast on this laptop. It makes me think that IF the Linux community can solve the kernel/graphics problem with the Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device [8086:3582] (that is on this laptop) I may install LXDE on this laptop instead of Gnome or KDE or Xfce. LXDE is fast. I suspect the soonest we will see this graphic problem solved will be in openSUSE-12.0.
I also note from other testing (of openSUSE-11.3 milestone4) that the 11.3 LXDE will be significantly superior to this 11.2 LXDE. A big “if” in this is if the LXDE community survives for 12.0. Right now the openSUSE LXDE community is very fragile in terms of not many volunteers helping, … but if we can get through this very rough startup period (where limited resources are doing all the work and are in danger of burn out), then it will be a superb desktop for old laptops such as this, with functional wireless capabilities.
Well, I did some hands-on testing. The wireless card in this computer works. What does not is the actual hardware switch. The hardware switch is not working at all. So, the conclusion is a faulty switch. Since the laptop is old, I would be better off buying a Ralink r73 usb stick for it and be done with it. Its only about 15-20 Euros for me, so I will go that route. Forget the bug report, just using some good-old fashioned hands on testing got me going in the right direction. The konsole command in dmesg is returning this output about the Radio switch not because of BIOS, but because the switch is physically unable to attempt to work. So for those people out there who get the Radio switch disabled output in dmesg, this is not a firmware issue, not a driver issue, and not a wireless issue. It’s your actual wireless switch, telling you that it’s broken and physically unable to work because it is faulty. This command output will not show anything as far as wireless if the card is faulty. My card appears in dmesg, but cannot start because of the faulty switch.
If the wireless works in windows, it means you need to switch it using software in linux.
You’ve got nothing to lose, so try installing acerhk to enable the rf switch. (software.opensuse.org/search)
To run the module, run the following commands as root:
modprobe acerhk force_series=290 usedritek=1
echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled