Im using openSuse 11.1 using KDE 4.1 and using the ip2200 module. I am also using knetworkmanager. The wireless worked straight from installation. I let the the updater update and when it finished knetworkmanager told me my wireless is disabled. I can occasionally get it to work if I reinstall the ipw-firmware from the dvd but that doesnt properly fix the problem. If I use modprobe to remove and readd the ipw2200 module knetworkmanager says the wireless is enabled again but the New Connection box just wont even open. Ifconfig eth1 up does nothing and the output from iwconfig is:
eth1 radio off ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Channel:0 Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power=off Sensitivity=8/0
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off 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
which just tells me again the radio is off. The hardware switch is also on all the time. To confuse me even more about 10% of the times I turn on my laptop Knetworkmanager works fine and the wireless isnt disabled…
Is there a simple command (as mentioned ifconfig does nothing) to turn on the radio that i could set to run when KDE boots or is the problem lying elsewhere?
The radio (transmitter/receiver) of your card is switched off, so your problem is most likely not a wireless driver issue.
eth1 **radio off** ESSID:off/any
To me this looks mostly like a (beginning) hardware problem if your card is sometimes activated and sometimes not (if you have a “real” hardware switch and not a software solution pretending to be a switch).
Im thinking it might be more of a networkmanager problem, as when I switch yast to using ifup and reloading ipw2200 with modprobe it seems to work, at least it is now, which it shouldnt considering it failed only a few minutes ago… Using networkmanager, and reloading ipw2200 when networkmanager is running does enable the radio again but networkmanager wont open the new connection dialog. Is there a way of forcing the module to be reloaded at boot, as reloading it does seem to enable the radio? Or is the module just not loading properly at boot? This is what dmesg has to say if this helps
If really only NetworkManager gives you this problem, then sticking with ifup is a good option, if you need several Networking profiles, have a look at SCPM (Profile manager), available via YaST.
I had the same card on my former laptop and never had any real problems with NWM or IFUP, especially I never saw NWM being really able to deactivate the radio of the card (ipw2200 is not controlled by rfkill.ko, so I don’t see how he even could do that, but my card had a real hardware switch, maybe it is connected to that).
After playing around some more, the wireless works using ifup, but only if I reload ipw2200 with modprobe before using the wireless every time I log in. Iwconfig doesnt even show my interface until ive reloaded ipw2200… So I think the problem must be how ipw2200 is being loaded at boot time. Im not sure how to fix this though…