Stable Fedora 7 Wireless Networking on a Thinkpad T60
Fedora 7 includes new, free iwl3945 wireless drivers. This means that users with the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 card in their laptops (like my T60 has) no longer have to install firmware and drivers manually to get wireless working like in FC6. This is great and makes Fedora much easier to install. Unfortunately, these new drivers don't seem to be quite stable yet. So, I've gone back to the old ipw3945 wireless drivers, which have been much more stable for me. Here's how I did it:
- do a rpm install to get the freshrpms repo:
rpm -ivh http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/7/freshrpms-release/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm - install the ipw3945 packages:
yum install -y ipw3945-kmdl-`uname -r` ipw3945 - create /etc/modprobe.d/ipw3945 with the contents:
install ipw3945 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ipw3945 ; sleep 0.5 ; /sbin/ipw3945d --quiet
remove ipw3945 /sbin/ipw3945d --kill ; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove ipw3945 - add to /etc/rc.local to start ipw3945:
# start wireless networking
modprobe -r ipw3945; sleep 0.5; modprobe ipw3945
Note: If you ever update your kernel to a newer version, you will have to do a
yum install -y ipw3945-kmdl-`uname -r`
to get the corresponding wireless module for your new kernel. This is one of the disadvantages of going to the old ipw3945 drivers versus the ones included in Fedora 7.
6 comments:
very nice, but would be nice if you tell us how did you configure it. I followed everything, but still can not get the card to show in system-config-network.
I use network manager for setting up my wireless connection. Network manager automatically detected my card and setup my connection for me after I setup the wireless drivers.
Still no progress. It's not recognizing the card. The module is loaded and installed properlly. But can not establish a connectin using the wireless.
Hey thanks so much! This worked for me. I never thought about using the repos and yum (I had always fumbled around looking for the source code D'OH!).
One tweak I learned is to add the line 'alias wlan0 ipw3945' to the /etc/modprobe.conf file (that way no need to add modprobe in /etc/rc.local).
You're on my bookmarks now for sure pal!
In case that everyone install the iwl3945 which is available in DVD, then found out that it not work. Really does everybody thinking that it should work when install ? me too.
So you need to blacklist them:
vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Add lines:
blacklist iwl3945
blacklist mac80211
Reboot
Credit goes to fedorasolved.org
This is great andDiablo III Gold makes Fedora much easier to install. Unfortunately, these new drivers don't seem to be quite stable yet. So, I've gone back to the old ipw3945 wirelessCheap Guild Wars 2 Gold drivers, which have been much more stable for me.
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