[svlug] Install Intel pro 3945 Wireless card on Dell Inspiron E1405 laptop; running SUSE10.0

[Benjamin Floering]

Hey,

I have the 3945 working on my Lenovo T60p.  It turns out that there are two
separate projects supporting this hardware: the older
ipw3945<http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/>driver and the newer
iwlwifi <http://intellinuxwireless.org/?p=iwlwifi>.  It looks like you have
a rather old 2.6.13 kernel, which is definitely not going to be compatible
with the iwlwifi driver.  Take a look at the gentoo hardware compatibility
matrix for this <http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_ipw3945>.  You need to
upgrade to at least a 2.6.18 to be able to use the iwlwifi according to this
data (and even then there is a kernel patch, only the 2.6.22 and above
doesn't require a patch.)  The reason for this is that the Intel guys have
totally re-written the wireless stack in the kernel and called it
mac80211<http://intellinuxwireless.org/?p=mac80211>.
Your kernel has the old ieee80211 subsystem and is therefore incompatible
with the iwlwifi driver.

BTW, I used to be running with the ipw3945 until a few weeks ago and finally
upgraded to 2.6.22 with the iwlwifi since I noticed it worked without a
kernel patch and reports of the stability were somewhat favorable.  It works
but there is no LED support and I get a strange interface name (wlan0_rename
?)  I run gentoo 2007.0 on this machine.

Hope this helps,
-Ben

On 9/17/07, Afroze Mohammad <mohammad.afroze at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> John Conover wrote:
> > Afroze Mohammad writes:
> >
> >> Tin Le wrote:
> >>
> >>> Did you do what the error message tell you to do? :-)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>> Makefile:23: 'make SHELL=/bin/bash'.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>> If your SHELL env var is defined to another shell, then eventhough you
> >>> explicitly run bash by typing bash, make will spawn sub processes
> using
> >>> what the SHELL env var tell it to use.  That's probably where you are
> >>> getting errors.
> >>>
> >>> Tin Le
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Hi Tin,
> >>
> >> Yes, I first tried 'make SHELL=/bin/bash" and I get the error again as
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Try:
> >
> >     /bin/bash
> >     SHELL=/bin/bash
> >     export SHELL
> >     make
> >
> >       John
> >
> >
> Hi John,
>
> I tried the above steps, but I still get the same error
>
> ============================================================
> linux:~/Desktop/downloads/wireless card drivers for
> Linux/iwlwifi-1.0.0-1 # /bin/bash
> linux:~/Desktop/downloads/wireless card drivers for
> Linux/iwlwifi-1.0.0-1 # SHELL=/bin/bash
> linux:~/Desktop/downloads/wireless card drivers for
> Linux/iwlwifi-1.0.0-1 # export SHELL
> linux:~/Desktop/downloads/wireless card drivers for
> Linux/iwlwifi-1.0.0-1 # make
> Makefile:20:
> Makefile:21: WARNING: $SHELL not set to bash.
> Makefile:22: If you experience build errors, try
> Makefile:23: 'make SHELL=/bin/bash'.
> Makefile:24:
> Kernel Makefile not found at '/lib/modules/2.6.13-15.16-smp/source'
> make: *** [compatible/kversion] Error 1
> linux:~/Desktop/downloads/wireless card drivers for
> Linux/iwlwifi-1.0.0-1 # ls
> .        FILES     ISSUES       LICENSE.GPL     dvals   patches
> ..       GIT_SHA1  LICENSE      Makefile        load    scripts
> CHANGES  INSTALL   LICENSE.BSD  README.iwlwifi  origin  unload
> *linux:~/Desktop/downloads/wireless card drivers for
> Linux/iwlwifi-1.0.0-1 # make SHELL=/bin/bash
> Kernel Makefile not found at '/lib/modules/2.6.13-15.16-smp/source'
> make: *** [compatible/kversion] Error 1*
> ===================================
>
>
> Thanks
>
> --Afroze
>
> _______________________________________________
> svlug mailing list
> svlug at lists.svlug.org
> http://lists.svlug.org/lists/listinfo/svlug
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.svlug.org/archives/svlug/attachments/20070917/57980e29/attachment.htm