Wireless Card Won't Turn On!!!

[RJRibeira]

I've installed FC6 on my laptop and I think I've got my IPW2200bg wireless card drivers installed correctly. But I can't get the card to actually turn on. It turns off and on fine in Windows but when I boot into linux it starts off and won't turn on. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

[SyntheticShield]

I assume you have a wireless capable router?

If so, type iwconfig at the console (have to be root I believe) and see if it see and SSID, something like:


IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"YourSSIDHere"


If not you may need to enable your wireless connection. For mine I type ifconfig ath0 up. After you do that run iwconfig again and see if you see an SSID then. If so then your card sees the router. At that point you may need to run dhclient to get it fully going.

I dont know how to fully explain it all, but that is what I have to do when I put in my card, but that should get you going. All of my drivers are installed and everytime I put in my wireless card (D-Link DWL-G650) I have to turn the card on and then run dhclient to get it to connect. Hope this helps out.

[RJRibeira]

When I type in iwconfig it says:

[RJRibeira@littleryan ~]$ su
Password:
[root@littleryan RJRibeira]# iwconfig
bash: iwconfig: command not found
[root@littleryan RJRibeira]#

??

[RJRibeira]

Hello anyone? I wouldn't usually bump myself like this but this one problem has already sucked up like 30 hours of my time and its getting pretty ridiculous. This is a fairly common wireless card so someone's got to know something.

[AlexThomson_NZ]

I still have nightmares about the troubles I had getting this to work in FC6. Just follow the tutorials (there are heaps around). The key thing to remember is- you only have to install the firmware, the rest is already installed (wpa support, etc.), but broken. I basicially just trial-and-error hack around, rebooting almost constantly (this seems to be needed!) and eventually it comes right. Once it is done, it is usually very stable.

I think I made some notes last time I tried (I re-install a lot, and got sick of this hackery), so will try to post them I get a moment.

[RJRibeira]

Your notes would be helpful.

However, I would point out that I have read all the heaps of tutorials you're talking about and none of them seem to apply to my situation. I've got the firmware installed. I've double and triple checked that its in there using several different methods. I've checked that the driver and ieewhatever module are in there and they are. So I'm pretty sure at this point that its not a driver or firmware issue. The problem is that my card won't turn on.

I've got a laptop and there's a little WiFi indicator and a button allowing you to turn the card on and off. The card won't go on at all. So when I boot up linux it says something about the ipw2200 (my wireless card) and then it says "device not found [failed]". I'm guessing that's because the card isn't on when its doing its little check.

I can't find anything anywhere about this issue.

Anyway, thanks for your post, I'd definitely still be happy to hear any advice you have. Thanks.

[Iron_Mike]

I've installed FC6 on my laptop and I think I've got my IPW2200bg wireless card drivers installed correctly. But I can't get the card to actually turn on. It turns off and on fine in Windows but when I boot into linux it starts off and won't turn on. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

What brand of laptop?? Do a google search using linux wireless, laptop model and see if any related articles. My laptop has a hardware switch that switches the wireless off and on, by default it is always on. When you run the iwconfig command, you have to use the su - (SU Dash) to get to root and using the environment / path

If the laptop has a hardware button, and it doesn't come on, I would be looking at hardware issue first.

[RJRibeira]

WHOOOO! After a month of struggle I am typing this post right now over my wireless connection!

Ok, just in case anyone else has a similar problem I will explain what the problem was.

Aparently, FC6 doesn't use the WiFi indicator light. In other words, my card was on, the light just doesn't work when I'm in fedora.

The other problem was that my Wireless card was showing up in the wired ethernet category in the network manager rather than the wireless category. So to fix that problem I first set up the wireless card as if it was a wired connection, then I went to " /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1" (Assuming your wireless card is eth1) Then I changed the entry "Type" from "Ethernet" to "Wireless" (you have to be root). Then I rebooted. The first time I rebooted it still didn't work, but the second time it works great! So There you go. Thanks for all the help guys!

[AlexThomson_NZ]

Yay! Good job RJRibeira :)

[Duli]

When I type in iwconfig it says:

[RJRibeira@littleryan ~]$ su
Password:
[root@littleryan RJRibeira]# iwconfig
bash: iwconfig: command not found
[root@littleryan RJRibeira]#

??

Instead of "su" try "su -".

The "su -" command gives you root power with default root paths.

[sdowney717]

here is my config. and my light does comeon when the wireless card is on.
it is a microsoft mn-730 using broadcom chip 4325 and I use ndiswrapper with windows drivers to get it to work. And yes, it is a pain. My own card came up as eth1 instead of wlan0

# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
HWADDR=00:0d:3a:6d:ec:4e
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
ONBOOT=no
USERCTL=no
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=yes
ESSID=linksys
CHANNEL=6
MODE=Managed
RATE=11M