AntiX 13 + Acer Aspire 1690 = Missing wlan0

Goodolandy · posted: 2013-07-10 02:07

Hello everyone,

I have tried a bunch of different Linux Distro's on my Aspire 1690 laptop like Bodhi, Puppy, Linux Mint and several versions of Ubuntu and all worked great right from the start.

However, I found all of them slow on this laptop so I did another search on a fast Linux Distro and found AntiX. So far I am really enjoying it and it's less than 1 minute boot time while the others I have tried had a 2 minute plus boot time.

One thing that is not working though is the wireless and in fact, when I go view my hardware, AntiX does not even show wlan0 in the network interfaces. This is the first distro to not have wireless working right from the start.

Although I have been using Linux for some years now, I am still not at the guru level but not afraid either of using the terminal.

Hope someone has an idea of what might be happening.

BitJam · posted: 2013-07-10 03:00

Welcome Goodolandy. I don't use wireless myself but there are plenty of people here who do who can help you. There is a youtube video on
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url was:"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WO8NaM2tM&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLTRkAa6x1htVoyKvMjX8DDQkBJ5YSfVrt"
linktext was:"how to set up wireless on antiX"
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. It helped the previous person who had trouble getting their wireless working.

The video is one in a series by the user Dolphin_Oracle called
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url was:"https://www.youtube.com/runwiththedolphin"
linktext was:"runwiththedolphin"
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.

I hope that video helps you fix your problem. If not, there will be people here tomorrow who can help you.

Goodolandy · posted: 2013-07-10 03:10

Hello BitJam,

I already watched that video but like I said, the wlan0 isn't even showing up in System Information. It's weird since other distro's have never shown this problem.

BitJam · posted: 2013-07-10 04:15

Oops. Sorry about that. As I said, I'm not familiar with wireless. On the plus side, I am familiar with pesky kernel modules. I looked around and it seems that you need the ipw2200 module, which is also used on the
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url was:"http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/Acer/ASPIRE+1650"
linktext was:"Acer Asprie 1650"
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.

Open up a terminal window and run:

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$ lsmod | grep ipw

and see if ipw2200 shows up. If not, you can solve your problem by loading that module as root:

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$ sudo modprobe ipw2200[/url].

If this works, you can make sure that module loads every time you boot by editing either /etc/modules or /etc/modules-load.d/modules.conf  (one file is a symlink to the other) and adding a line that contains"ipw2200".

If it doesn't work, I'd like to see the output of"lsmod" and"lspci -k".   If you are comfortable with it, you can post the outputs at  [url=http://pastebin.com/]pastebin[/url].  Otherwise just post them here.

If you [url=https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=Acer+Aspire+1690+linux+wireless]Google(Acer Aspire 1690 linux wireless)[/url] you will see that other people have had trouble getting the wireless to work on your machine.  The first hit suggested loading the driver which I explained above.    

[url=http://www.lathspell.de/linux/Acer_Aspire_1690_Linux_survey/]This page[/url] says you need to [url=http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php]download firmware[/url] to get it to work.   AntiX-13.1 uses version 1.2.2kmprq of the modules so you would use the most recent version of the firmware.  You need to accept a license agreement in order to download the firmware which is probably why it was not already included in antiX.   Debian (and hence antiX) comes with a lot of firmeware already in the /live/firmware directory.

I tried to download the firmware myself so I could check the filename but I got stuck at the license agreement.  Maybe you will have better luck.

rokytnji · posted: 2013-07-10 13:21

Hope you are feeling better BitJam.

Howdy and Welcome Goodolandy. I want you to also try BitJams lsmod command suggestion and post it's output also.

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url was:"antix.freeforu ms.org/m-11-wireless-a-disappointment-t3622.html"
linktext was:"M11 worked with ipw2200"
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so how about you run some terminal commands for me. This one as root.

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dmseg | grep firmware

These ones as just a user (no need for root)

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inxi -Fxz

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ifconfig -a

ipw2200 firmware is in synaptic package manager.

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url was:"http://wiki.debian.org/ipw2200"
linktext was:"http://wiki.debian.org/ipw2200"
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url was:"http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=firmware-ipw2x00"
linktext was:"http://packages.debian.org/search?keywo ... re-ipw2x00"
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Old 2011 post of mine showing me running ipw2200 on one of my wireless computers.

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url was:"http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/debian-linux/176304-wireless-connection-dropping-out-constantly-failing-authentication.html#post833401"
linktext was:"http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/debian ... post833401"
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So that is why I asked for the previous terminal info because maybe your case is different and we won't know till we see
what hardware you are running to be sure.

Happy Trails, Rok

BitJam · posted: 2013-07-10 13:51

Thanks Roky, I am feeling better.

Although I was tired last night and didn't bother re-writing my post. The last part is probably more important than the beginning. I think the ipw2200 module works in general and was probably being loaded automatically on his computer but his particular model needs the firmware in order for the module to work properly as was reported in
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.lathspell.de/linux/Acer_Aspire_1690_Linux_survey/"
linktext was:"installing Debian on Acer Aspire 1690"
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:

Wireless LAN
Find out the driver version with"modinfo ipw2200", download the matching firmware from
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url was:"http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php"
linktext was:"http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php"
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and install the contents of the tar archive in /lib/firmware/. If you see the following line in the syslog or via dmesg:"Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work." then you have to press the little button at the front of the notebook or, if it is not recognized use the instructions on
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url was:"http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Ipw2200"
linktext was:"http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Ipw2200"
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that is type:
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echo"" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/*/rf_kill/

Goodolandy · posted: 2013-07-10 15:33

Thank you BitJam,

I did the lsmod with no result. Did the modprobe and lsmod started displaying the ipw so I edited the file /etc/modules-load.d/modules.conf and now wireless is working everytime I boot the laptop.

One thing I find interesting, other than AntiX auto loading this like other distro's, is the wireless interface being listed as eth1 instead of wlan0 like other distro's.

Anyways, I'm happy to have a fast distro on this laptop and now I can further explore what AntiX can do.

Thanks again BitJam

BitJam · posted: 2013-07-10 15:58

I'm glad I didn't delete the first half of my post!

I'm also glad you got it to work.