Configure Wireless on Linux

I had made a previous attempt to get wireless to work on Linux on my other (a Dell) laptop. It has the same wireless chipset Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 that is on the current laptop (an IBM thinkpad provided by my client). Somehow I had managed to get the wireless to recognize the wireless networks last time around, but could not manage it to get to connect. There were a couple of flaws in my approach now that I have the benefit of hindsight.

1. I did not search for the correct terms on the internet
2. I did not search in the correct locations.

Whatever I searched last time around pointed me to use NDIS wrapper as a solution for the lack of driver / specs from Broadcom. Broadcom is the chipset manufacturer. But as I have experienced, it is a less than elegant and not a guaranteed solution.

What is confusing in the entire affair is that Linux correctly identifies the presence of the wireless card during installation / boot process, but fails to bring the card up saying that the device is not present. Kind of contradictory, I know, but that how it is. To add to the confusion it treats the card as an ethernet card and not wireless card. The key thing to identify here is that there is no firmware for the wireless card that come by default with Linux.

Secondly on searching for "intel 2100 drivers, firmware, linux" on Google I found that Intel has created a project on Sourceforge to support the Linux community. Additionally the card needs IEEE802.11 networking stack for the Linux kernel. The same can be downloaded from Sourceforge.

Once they are downloaded and extracted change to root by using su - and then traverse in the directory where the archives have been extracted. It is required that the IEEE 802.11 networking stack be installed before the drivers. To install, enter the following commands

[root@linux6 ieee80211-1.2.17]# make

Once the make process ends successfully, enter

[root@linux6 ieee80211-1.2.17]# make install

Once the installation is over successfully, while still under root authority, change to the directory where the drivers have been extracted. Once there, follow the same sequence of commands as above, albiet in the new directory. At the end of the installation, the device is now almost ready for use. There are two more steps need to be done before Linux can connect to wireless.

This set of Intel drivers do not contain the firmware for the card. I am not sure if the necessity for the firmware has been antiquated or whether this set assumes that you have the firmware. If it is latter and the firmware is not present, then the wireless will still not work. In that case, download the previous version ipw210-1.2.0 and copy over the firmware from the that package over in the /etc/firmware and in /lib/firmware directories. The firmware files typically look like:

ipw2100-1.3.fw
ipw2100-1.3-1.fw
ipw2100-1.3-p.fw

Second thing that needs to be done, is to change the device type from ethernet to wireless in the configuration file. To do that, while still under root authority, change directory to /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices directory and open the appropriate configuration file (I have wireless card as eth1, so I get the configuration file name as ifcfg-eth1) and change the line which defines type to wireless. Typically this is how the ifcfg-eth1 (or whatever the card name is) should look like:

# Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter
DEVICE=eth1
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
TYPE=Wireless

If the TYPE line is not present, add it manually. Back at the root prompt, do a modprobe eth1. If everything is correct, you
should come back to the root prompt.

Reboot your computer and you should see the wireless device coming up during the boot process. The next step is to connect to your preferred wireless network. If you have your own network in house which good signal strength without encryption, then you should be good to go. But generally that's not the case or when you are outside. Linux automatically configures the wireless
network with maximum signal strength and no encryption. To find out which network your computer is connected to type

iwconfig eth1

This command will show you the network that it is connected to. To change the preferred network change back to root authority by su - and type

iwconfig eth1 essid "network_name"

Where network_name is the name of the network you want to connect (The quote marks are required). Again I did not find this method to work 100% of time. A better option I have found out is to use the GUI Network Manager (Coming from the world of Windows, I find working with GUI easier.) Network Manager is an optional component that does not get installed by itself when Linux is first installed. To install Network Manager, change to root authority and type

yum install NetworkManager*

Alternately Network Manager can be installed using the GUI by clicking on Applications --> Add / Remove Software. Network manager is located in the optional components of the GNOME Desktop Environment. After installing the Network Manager, check to ensure that the Network manager is set to start automatically by clicking on System --> Services --> Network Manager.

Network Manager gives a Windows XP like ease in connecting to and configuring wireless network connections. I have not yet figured out how to use an encrypted wireless network by entering a WEP key, but it is just a matter of time I guess.

So finally after working for almost a week I figured out how to make wireless work on Linux - Fedora Core 6. I hope this helps in configuring wireless and saves time. There are some caveats and manual adjustments to be made if you are using IEEE802.11-1.2.16 and Intel PRO/Wireless drivers version 1.2.0. The important one is that it works only with Kernel version less than 2.6.19. It does not work with kernel version 2.6.20 which I can certify. It also has references to some old file locations which have to be edited. If you are working with the above conditions and run into issues, let me know and I will send you the working source code.

Supposedly, the newer versions are modified to work with higher kernel versions I have not tested it yet.

I have tested this on Fedora Core 6.