wireless card stoped working.

Eino · posted: 2012-11-14 20:32

When I had antix11 I was using
Network: Card-1: Realtek RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller driver: ndiswrapper
Now I’m using antix12
Today i moved this Machine across the house to it's home, and i lost my connection because of a weak signal.
So I tried to use ndiswrapper and got the following

Code: Select all

Module could not be loaded. Error was:

FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found.

Is the ndiswrapper module installed?

Now what?
Should I go back to antix 11?
I'm tired of having this Machine on my work bench.
I originally just wanted to install a bigger, faster, hard-drive.

Eino · posted: 2012-11-15 13:36

i just went back to antix 11.
Number one reason
Could not use ndiswrapper to set drivers for my wireless card. Linux drivers are not acceptable for this card.
Reason number two.
Could not use Transmission. Some times down load the check-sum file then use torrent for downloading it's faster than using a busy server. Transmission I can blacklist IP's I don't want, and I just have more control.
After the two items are fixed, I will go to antix 12. Until then I'm sticking with 11.

anticapitalista · posted: 2012-11-15 15:04

Eino, you shouldn't need ndiswrapper for your wireless since they are incorporated into the kernel.

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Eino · posted: 2012-11-16 16:44

It seems not to be loading the right driver. I have the computer about 100 feet away from the wireless router now, and getting 75% signal strength using the windows drivers. Before I did not see any signal strength when I moved it, and worked fine when it was on the workbench about 5 feet away from the router.

masinick · posted: 2012-11-16 17:03

Do you have the package wireless-tools installed? It should be there; if it isn't for some reason, then reinstall it.

# aptitude install wireless-tools
(or whatever apt tool you use for installation, synaptic, apt-get, etc.)

Make sure the wireless interface you are using is configured; when using wicd, for example, wlan0 is not always properly configured; I've had to add wlan0 as the wireless interface from the properties tab in some cases. The ceni wireless manager tends to get this right (as pre-configured) more consistently than wicd does, but wicd, once that is correctly set up, is really easy to use.

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and
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ought to provide the details you need.

However, if you enable ndiswrapper, that is going to interfere with the way that the native driver support works, and that is actually a likely cause for the issues that you are having. Since the native wireless drivers ARE included (and are known to work well) for the device you are using, I cannot see any good reason for using ndiswrapper, particularly if you do not have the Windows drivers used by ndiswrapper properly configured on your system.

If you do, for whatever reason, decide to use ndiswrapper anyway, then you have to disable the native drivers; the two different drivers conflict with one another, and will most assuredly create problems, preventing wireless from working properly at all. I've had multiple wireless drivers installed in a few cases on my system, and until I found them, decided which ones to use, disabling others, I encountered similar issues.

My suggestion: stick with the drivers provided by the standard wireless-tools package and disable access to all other interfaces.

masinick · posted: 2012-11-16 17:06

I don't think the distance or whether you are getting a signal is what is causing issues; I contend that it is multiple wireless firmware drivers that are in contention, blocking one another from responding to the network signals. Disable one of them (my recommendation: disable anything associated with ndiswrapper) and you should start cleanly seeing all nearby access points and you should then be able to connect to them.

Eino · posted: 2012-11-16 17:40

masinick wrote:I don't think the distance or whether you are getting a signal is what is causing issues; I contend that it is multiple wireless firmware drivers that are in contention, blocking one another from responding to the network signals. Disable one of them (my recommendation: disable anything associated with ndiswrapper) and you should start cleanly seeing all nearby access points and you should then be able to connect to them.

I had the problem with just the native drivers loaded, I uninstalled the native drivers before using ndiswrapper.
This way I know I have only one set firmware drivers loaded.
Now it seem to be working fine.

masinick · posted: 2012-11-16 18:50

IF it is working fine and you are comfortable with the setup you have now, then go with it; something that works counts!

Eino · posted: 2012-11-16 20:37

I'm not just beta testing just games anymore. When I'm not building computers from junk parts, I'm beta testing games for GSN networks. They like to see the games played across different platforms, to fix the bugs.

sobremore · posted: 2013-06-20 14:35

In Antix 13 ipw2200 wireless card don't work anymore!

ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0d:60:c9:63:5e
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
irda0 Link encap:IrLAP HWaddr 00:00:00:00
NOARP MTU:2048 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:8
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0

-------------------------------------------------------------- iwconfig
irda0 no wireless extensions.
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
--------------------------------------------------------------
lsmod | grep ipw
ipw2200 110156 0 libipw 17373 1 ipw2200 cfg80211 123731 2 libipw,ipw2200 lib80211 2526 2 libipw,ipw2200
--------------------------------------------------------------

dmesg | grep ipw

[ 7.936047] libipw: 802.11 data/management/control stack, git-1.1.13 [ 7.936054] libipw: Copyright (C) 2004-2005 Intel Corporation <jketreno@linux.intel.com> [ 8.322512] ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.2kmprq [ 8.322518] ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation [ 8.784859] ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection [ 8.805943] ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2 [ 8.806043] ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2 [ 8.806234] ipw2200: probe of 0000:02:02.0 failed with error -5

anticapitalista · posted: 2013-06-20 14:52

Install the non-free firmware.

See here:
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masinick · posted: 2013-06-20 14:58

Not sure why this is not working, but
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ought to help you through the process of figuring out what went wrong and correcting it; hope it is helpful to you.

Oops! anti and I must've posted at nearly the same time; same good advice, right? __{{emoticon}}__

sobremore · posted: 2013-06-20 16:34

Thanks to both of You, anticapitalista and masinick!

My problem is quickly solved!

This post will be sent with"new" ipw2200 driver __{{emoticon}}__

masinick · posted: 2013-06-20 18:57

sobremore wrote:Thanks to both of You, anticapitalista and masinick!

My problem is quickly solved!

This post will be sent with"new" ipw2200 driver __{{emoticon}}__

Congratulations! By the way, the Debian Wiki is an outstanding resource for anything we don't directly and specifically cover in our antiX and MEPIS documentation. Often, our documents will refer to the Wiki for more specific details.