wireless stopped working

hello
i’m running suse 10.3 on a gateway laptop, the wireless card had always worked fine but suddenly it stopped, and now ethernet is the only way to network,

i have checked yast > network settings and it says

Wireless Network Card (not connected)
BusID : 0000:04:00.0
Unable to configure the network card because the kernel device is not present

this error is very unexpected, i cannot explain why it happened, i used the install cd to reinstall the system but it failed to configure the network card

i want to know what configuration changed on my system, i really need to fix this because right now i don’t have the time, and i need to work on the laptop using wireless ¬¬

and i’m sure it works fine, i have used suse on this laptop from two months or so…

thanks for your help and advise

ramon com wrote:
> hello
> i’m running suse 10.3 on a gateway laptop, the wireless card had always
> worked fine but suddenly it stopped, and now ethernet is the only way to
> network,
>
> i have checked yast > network settings and it says
>
> Wireless Network Card (not connected)
> BusID : 0000:04:00.0
> Unable to configure the network card because the kernel device is not
> present
>
> this error is very unexpected, i cannot explain why it happened, i used
> the install cd to reinstall the system but it failed to configure the
> network card
>
> i want to know what configuration changed on my system, i really need
> to fix this because right now i don’t have the time, and i need to work
> on the laptop using wireless ¬¬
>
> and i’m sure it works fine, i have used suse on this laptop from two
> months or so…

What does the output of dmesg have to say about your wireless card?

this the hardware info,
the iwl3545 drivers and the microcodes seem to be installed, but something failed and now the wireless network adapter is ‘not configured’, kernel device not present



 UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_4222
  Unique ID: YmUS.OBot36EMKM8
  Parent ID: qTvu._Y5kuEY+GiC
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.1/0000:04:00.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:04:00.0
  Hardware Class: network
  Model: "Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection"
  Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x4222 "PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection"
  SubVendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  SubDevice: pci 0x1000 
  Revision: 0x02
 ** Driver: "ipw3945"
  Driver Modules: "ipw3945"**
  Features: WLAN
  Memory Range: 0xf1000000-0xf1000fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  IRQ: 16 (11 events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00004222sv00008086sd00001000bc02sc80i00"
**  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: iwl3945 is not active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe iwl3945"**
 ** Driver Info #1:
    Driver Status: ipw3945 is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe ipw3945"**
  Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #21 (PCI bridge)


i really appreciate your help, i need the wireless network enabled to do my job with this laptop and i don’t have the time and knowledge to manually check this issue, i’m using suse 10.3 and i remember everything was working fine and then something changed, and now the wireless doesn’t work, i don’t remember any specific update, it just stopped

thanks for your help & advise

ramon com wrote:
> this the hardware info,
> the iwl3545 drivers and the microcodes seem to be installed, but
> something failed and now the wireless network adapter is ‘not
> configured’, kernel device not present
>
>
> Code:
> --------------------
>
>
> UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_4222
> Unique ID: YmUS.OBot36EMKM8
> Parent ID: qTvu._Y5kuEY+GiC
> SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.1/0000:04:00.0
> SysFS BusID: 0000:04:00.0
> Hardware Class: network
> Model: “Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection”
> Vendor: pci 0x8086 “Intel Corporation”
> Device: pci 0x4222 “PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection”
> SubVendor: pci 0x8086 “Intel Corporation”
> SubDevice: pci 0x1000
> Revision: 0x02
> Driver: “ipw3945”
> Driver Modules: “ipw3945”
> Features: WLAN
> Memory Range: 0xf1000000-0xf1000fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
> IRQ: 16 (11 events)
> Module Alias: “pci:v00008086d00004222sv00008086sd00001000bc02sc80i00”
> DRIVER INFO #0:
> DRIVER STATUS: IWL3945 IS NOT ACTIVE
> DRIVER ACTIVATION CMD: “MODPROBE IWL3945”
> * Driver Info #1:
> Driver Status: ipw3945 is active
> Driver Activation Cmd: “modprobe ipw3945”*
> Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
> Attached to: #21 (PCI bridge)
>
>
> --------------------
>
>
> i really appreciate your help, i need the wireless card to do my job
> and i don’t have the time and knowledge to manually check this issue

Where does this say that the firmware is OK? Please check the output of dmesg to
see what it says.

Larry

the hardware info was taken from yast > hardware info

the output of dmesg:



NET: Registered protocol family 17
ip6_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
st: Version 20070203, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
r8169: eth0: link up
r8169: eth0: link up
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for Linux, 1.2.0s
iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
lp: driver loaded but no devices found

output of lspci


02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01)
04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)


more from dmeg


iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for Linux, 1.2.0s
iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:04:00.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:04:00.0 to 64
iwl3945: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection

......


Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work.
iwl3945: WARNING: Requesting MAC access during RFKILL wakes up NIC
iwl3945: WARNING: Requesting MAC access during RFKILL wakes up NIC
iwl3945: WARNING: Requesting MAC access during RFKILL wakes up NIC
iwl3945: WARNING: Requesting MAC access during RFKILL wakes up NIC
iwl3945: Tunable channels: 11 802.11bg, 13 802.11a channels



the hardware config has changed but still no wireless

33: PCI 400.0: 0282 WLAN controller
  [Created at pci.301]
  UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_4222
  Unique ID: YmUS.OBot36EMKM8
  Parent ID: qTvu._Y5kuEY+GiC
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.1/0000:04:00.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:04:00.0
  Hardware Class: network
  Model: "Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection"
  Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x4222 "PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection"
  SubVendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  SubDevice: pci 0x1000 
  Revision: 0x02
  Driver: "iwl3945"
  Driver Modules: "iwl3945"
  Features: WLAN
  Memory Range: 0xf1000000-0xf1000fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  IRQ: 219 (12 events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00004222sv00008086sd00001000bc02sc80i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: iwl3945 is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe iwl3945"
  Driver Info #1:
    Driver Status: ipw3945 is not active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe ipw3945"
  Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #21 (PCI bridge)

Did some googling for this problem and found this.
Would it have anything to do with your laptops wireless card hot key like it says here?

Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work.

The last two lines were a worry, but Jacques Vuillemin suggested that Fn-F2 is the magic to turn off the Kill Switch. If this doesn’t work then modify the BIOS (F2 on boot) to disable the wireless hotley. The wireless load command worked for me after Fn-F2

Hope it helps.

ramon com schrieb:
> i’m running suse 10.3 on a gateway laptop, the wireless card had always
> worked fine but suddenly it stopped, and now ethernet is the only way to
> network,
>
> i have checked yast > network settings and it says
>
> Wireless Network Card (not connected)
> BusID : 0000:04:00.0
> Unable to configure the network card because the kernel device is not
> present

Probably the consequence of a kernel update which didn’t bring a working
driver for your wireless card with it.

What type (manufacturer, model) of wireless card is it? What did you do
to get it to run initially? If you installed any driver module for it
that is not in the mainline Linux kernel, you might have to reinstall it.

HTH
T.