When to expect support for 3945 Wireless in Rawhide

[John W. Linville]

On Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 02:58:31PM -0500, Paul Michael Reilly wrote:
> John W. Linville wrote:

> >Shortly after Intel actual posts a patch for inclusion of the iwlwifi
> >driver in the wireless-dev kernel tree.
> >
> >For now, you may wish to try my test kernels:
> >
> >	http://people.redhat.com/linville/kernels/fc7/
> 
> I'm guessing you are the maintainer who is responsible for this piece of 
> code in particular.  If correct you have my endless appreciation for 
> what you do.  If I'm wrong then I would dearly love to hear from the 
> maintainer.

I'm the primary gatekeeper for what wireless networking changes go
into the upstream and/or Fedora kernels.  There are other paths,
but most of those people would rather I take care of it. :-)

> I assume you are in contact with the development mail list for the team 
> that will supply the patch.  From what Dennis Gilmore has to say it 
> would appear that there is a chance there is some confusion about how 
> ipw3945 is supposed to get into Fedora 7.  It would be very good if the 
> maintainer could confirm who is waiting on what such that F7 does not 
> ship without first class ipw3945 support.

I have been in contact with them.  They feel that their development
pace is still too brisk to provide the stability which they feel is
implied by being in the upstream kernels.  I hope they will have a
patch upstream within the next couple of weeks.  If not then at some
point we might consider getting a snapshot of their driver from their
website into Fedora.

> I ran your kernel and the chip was detected on my HP nw9440 laptop so I 
> considered that one hurdle overcome.  But I forgot to download the 
> firmware.  Now why is that a separate process?  How is this going to 

Is this an honest inquiry into why some devices have separate
firmware files?  Or is it a veiled complaint about something which
I really cannot control?  In case it is the former, reasons include
releasing the firmware under a different license than the kernel and
being able to change the firmware without having to rebuild the kernel.

> work with F7?  Surely the firmware will be included in some rpm. 
> Correct?  If so can you supply both that rpm and the kernel rpm and I 
> will perform a more realistic test.

I have no such RPM.  The firmware is downloadable from the iwlwifi
project site:

	http://intellinuxwireless.org

I believe there is an effort to get freely redistributable firmware
packaged and available in the main Fedora repositories.  But, that
work is being done primarily by someone other than me.  You may want
to look here:

	https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=230096

Hth!

John
-- 
John W. Linville
linville at redhat.com