I'm making some progress on understanding my wireless troubles and the iwl3945 driver for ipw3945. In my adventure with the iwl3945 driver and the new-ish Fedora kernels, I found this page by Bill Moss at Clemson. It explains some details I've not found elsewhere. http://www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/f8-nm-iwl3945-B.shtml It mentions a project compat-wireless which has daily-updated code for many different network kernel modules. Here's the tarball http://linuxwireless.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2 The patches mentioned on Bill Moss's page are already applied in the compat-wireless package that is online today. It is updated every day. I can verify that compat-wireless it is easy to install and, after comparing the code day after day, it really does change every day. I'm a little concerned that they don't have a marker in the file name to indicate the date, because when you find one that works, you'd like to be able to refer people to it. A case in point. I have the Intel ipw3945 wireless in a Dell Laptop. It hardly ever works under the iwl3945 driver in the 2.6.24 kernel from Fedora, but I have had some luck experimenting with various koji kernels. I never could figure out why it would change from day to day, but I'm getting an idea that it traces back to the compat-wireless changing from day to day. Today, after updating the compat-wireless modules and restarting, it actually found some networks and joined one. I almost fainted. NetworkManager working? I had a dream like this last week, but a twenty-five year old Farrah Fawcett was in it too, so I knew it was not real. There's no Farrah today, so I'm guessing I just got lucky with the iwl3945 from compat-wireless. :) If you are one of the suffering iwl3945 users with the 2.6.24 kernel, I wonder if the compat-wireless modules will help you as well? You might as well try it. It is as easy as a "make" and "make install" "make unload" and "make load". Or a restart. Their directions are great. I don't think you will see any new information in dmesg, the version information is the same with either the kernel's iwl3945 driver or the update. 1/2/26kds is the version: $ dmesg | grep iwl iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for Linux, 1.2.26kds iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation iwl3945: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 3945ABG iwl3945: Tunable channels: 11 802.11bg, 13 802.11a channels phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-3945-rs' But today it worked, and that's mainly what I'm here to say. Here's my follow up question. When you run make install in the compat-wireless package, it drops a bunch of kernel modules into your /lib/modules hierearchy. It does not wipe out what you have, but rather it drops them in a directory structure it creates and it runs depmod for you. In my case today, the files are installed under: /lib/modules/2.6.24.3-22.fc8/updates/drivers/net I'm a little puzzled why or how the kernel (or is it depmod?) knows to use the updates drivers before the ones provided by the kernel. See what I mean, I have both sets still: $ find . -name "mac8*" ./kernel/net/mac80211 ./kernel/net/mac80211/mac80211.ko ./updates/net/mac80211 ./updates/net/mac80211/mac80211.ko PJ -- Paul E. Johnson Professor, Political Science 1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504 University of Kansas
