FC3 wireless support on IPW2200 Tecra M2

[Christopher J. Bottaro]

<posted & mailed>

Scot L. Harris wrote:

> Been fighting this problem off and on for the past month or two.
> 
> FC3 system running 770 kernel on a Tecra M2 laptop with the 2200BG
> centrino wireless chip set.
> 
> Loaded the firware package and have been able to get the system to
> recognize the wireless hardware.  Configuration of the wireless seems to
> work, can set the essid and wep key as well as the channel info.

Heh, I think we have very similar laptops (we also share the problem of not
being able to turn on dma mode for our CD/DVD drive).  Anyways, I don't
know if this is the same as what you are experiencing, but I had problems
with the IPW2200 drivers.  Here's what I found out and my simple solution
to my problems...

Stock FC3 kernel doesn't come with ipw2200 modules.  I upgraded to latest
kernel (770 I think?) via yum.  That kernel _does_ come with ipw2200
modules, but they wouldn't work with the firmware from freshrpms nor from
the ipw2200.sourceforge.net site.  So I deleted all the modules, installed
ipw2200 from scratch and installed the firmware from the sourceforge site
into /lib/firmware/.  Then all was well for me.

The following is taken from
http://www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/fc2-ipw2200.shtml:

---
Beginning with the FC3 update kernel 2.6.9-1.724, the ieee80211, ipw2100,
and ipw2200 modules are included. If you remove the kernel installation,

  # cd /lib/modules/2.6.10-1.741_FC3/kernel/drivers/net/wireless
  # rm -rf ieee80211 ipw2100 ipw2200

you can install [ipw2200 from source].
---

Hope that helps.