dv2000, 3945abg wireless doesn't work live?

[teryret]

Hello all. For the longest time I've been an ubuntu encourager, but as a .NET programmer I couldn't really justify running it myself. But now that I no longer have that job I think it's about time to make that switch. Trouble is, I rather like my computer as is, so I'm not going to format it until I'm sure this computer will run ubuntu entirely, which means I'm doing all of this in an 8.04 live session (but that shouldn't cause any problems, right?).

So far everything has worked out of the box with the exception of the wireless networking.

lspci -v | less says:

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8039 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 14)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 30cd
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 218
Memory at f4200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
I/O ports at 3000 [size=256]
Capabilities: <access denied>

07:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 135b
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 217
Memory at f4300000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: <access denied>

According to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ha...workCardsIntel it should* work "out of the box", but it doesn't seem to.

iwconfig reports:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

As I was searching around I found a thread that talked about some hp laptops needing to turn the wifi card on. This resonated with me because the LED that indicates that wifi is enabled in windows is showing what would mean in windows that the card is turned off. But for all I know that's simply due to lack of installed drivers for that particular LED on this particular laptop. The problem is, if it's turned off, I don't know how to turn it on, since the switch is already set to on (and flipping it either way didn't seem to do anything).

So, uh, where should I start on troubleshooting this?

[jualin]

Can you type the output of

lsmod

to check if the correct module has been loaded.

[teryret]

I'm sure I could type it, but it's pretty long, so I think I'll just cheat and copy/paste it .

lsmod:

Module Size Used by
arc4 2944 2
ecb 4480 2
blkcipher 8324 1 ecb
i915 32512 2
drm 82452 3 i915
ipv6 267780 10
af_packet 23812 2
rfcomm 41744 2
l2cap 25728 13 rfcomm
bluetooth 61156 4 rfcomm,l2cap
ppdev 10372 0
parport_pc 36260 0
lp 12324 0
parport 37832 3 ppdev,parport_pc,lp
acpi_cpufreq 10796 2
cpufreq_userspace 5284 0
cpufreq_stats 7104 0
cpufreq_powersave 2688 0
cpufreq_ondemand 9740 1
freq_table 5536 3 acpi_cpufreq,cpufreq_stats,cpufreq_ondemand
cpufreq_conservative 8712 0
sbs 15112 0
sbshc 7680 1 sbs
container 5632 0
dock 11280 0
usblp 15872 0
usbhid 31872 0
hid 38784 1 usbhid
snd_hda_intel 344728 2
snd_pcm_oss 42144 0
snd_mixer_oss 17920 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 78596 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_page_alloc 11400 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd_hwdep 10500 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_seq_dummy 4868 0
snd_seq_oss 35584 0
snd_seq_midi 9376 0
snd_rawmidi 25760 1 snd_seq_midi
uvcvideo 58116 0
compat_ioctl32 2304 1 uvcvideo
videodev 29440 1 uvcvideo
v4l1_compat 15492 2 uvcvideo,videodev
joydev 13120 0
snd_seq_midi_event 8320 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq 54224 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_mid i_event
v4l2_common 18304 2 uvcvideo,videodev
iwl3945 89844 0
snd_timer 24836 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device 9612 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi ,snd_seq
iwlwifi_mac80211 219108 1 iwl3945
psmouse 40336 0
cfg80211 15112 1 iwlwifi_mac80211
battery 14212 0
snd 56996 15 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,sn d_hwdep,snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_ seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
video 19856 0
sdhci 19076 0
sky2 47492 0
ac 6916 0
intel_agp 25492 1
output 4736 1 video
serio_raw 7940 0
ricoh_mmc 4352 0
mmc_core 51460 1 sdhci
wmi_acer 9644 0
evdev 13056 9
button 9232 0
shpchp 34452 0
iTCO_wdt 13092 0
agpgart 34760 3 drm,intel_agp
soundcore 8800 1 snd
pcspkr 4224 0
pci_hotplug 30880 1 shpchp
iTCO_vendor_support 4868 1 iTCO_wdt
squashfs 49160 1
loop 18948 2
unionfs 76752 1
nls_cp437 6656 1
isofs 36388 1
sr_mod 17956 1
cdrom 37408 1 sr_mod
sg 36880 0
sd_mod 30720 0
ata_piix 19588 1
pata_acpi 8320 0
ohci1394 33584 0
ahci 28420 0
ata_generic 8324 0
ieee1394 93752 1 ohci1394
libata 159344 4 ata_piix,pata_acpi,ahci,ata_generic
scsi_mod 151436 4 sr_mod,sg,sd_mod,libata
ehci_hcd 37900 0
uhci_hcd 27024 0
usbcore 146028 6 usblp,usbhid,uvcvideo,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
thermal 16796 0
processor 36872 4 acpi_cpufreq,thermal
fan 5636 0
fbcon 42912 0
tileblit 3456 1 fbcon
font 9472 1 fbcon
bitblit 6784 1 fbcon
softcursor 3072 1 bitblit
fuse 50580 3

[jualin]

The "iwlwifi" and "iwl3945" modules are loaded, and those are suppose to be related to your card. Not sure why they are not being picked up. Maybe since you are using the Live CD the drivers are not enabled until after you restart (Nvidia cards work that way). Why don't you try installing Ubuntu using the Wubi installer (installing within Windows) which doesn't require partitioning or anything complicated, and which you can uninstall using Windows Control Panel. You can think of Wubi like a way to try Ubuntu real power with a "It works or your Windows back no questions asked" guarantee.

[teryret]

I didn't know there was any such installer. That's forking awesome. I'm going to go play with that right now, I'll let you know how it goes.

[jualin]

If you have the latest Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD, just put the CD inside Windows and install it just like you would install any other software in Windows. Make sure you select the option of "Install within Windows". If the wireless still doesn't work out of the box then let us know. Keep us posted and good luck!

[teryret]

Nothing is ever easy with me. I don't know why. After I installed it within windows it asked me to reboot, so I did.

As it was rebooting it displayed a behavior that I had been ignoring in hopes that it was a live disk only issue. Namely, it would freeze while the booting loading bar was on the screen. On the live CD a simple three finger solute bypassed the problem, on the HD install it froze up again later, and the second three finger solute rebooted the computer.

So, the second time it was coming up I selected verbose mode to see where it was having issues. As I was watching I noticed an error (probably not a real error but more of a verbose line item) that said to the effect of, "your hardware kill switch is ON, and must be OFF for wireless to work" accompanied by what I have to assume is a timestamp that said "68.754902". Once I had that written down I immediatly toggled the wifi switch (from the Wifi-On position to Wifi-Off) and rebooted, again in verbose mode, to find the exact same error.

This third time I let it boot all the way to fruition and it went through some installing proceedure and rebooted the system at the end.

At this point there was no more verbose mode to rely on both for errors and to get past the sticky parts of loading, and sure enough, it froze in the same spot as it had been, which was the same spot as the live disk had been.

So the takeaway from all of this is that A) I'm fairly certain that somehow I need to configure Ubuntu to recognize the wifi switch and enable the card correctly (but I'd settle for an always on wifi card, battery life be damned), and after I do that Wifi will "just work". B) I need to figure out how to get it to boot since the three finger solute doesn't seem to be doing it anymore.

Suggestions?

[teryret]

Quick bump with some additional info. I can boot reliably by selecting Recovery Mode at GRUB, but in the text that flies by I'm noticing the same type of error about the hardware killswitch. At this point I have two questions:

1) I'm sure the messages that scroll by when booting in Recovery Mode are logged somewhere, where is that log and how would I most easily search it (given that I'm already fluent in regex) for the timestamp (36.191153 in this most recent boot)?

2) I'd like to go on the assumption that the hardware wifi switch is in fact the problem (or a lack of drivers for it, either way), any suggestions for where in the software I should start poking around trying to find something that changes based on the state of the switch? My thinking is that if I can find that access then I should be able to come up with some hack that enables my wifi card based on it, right? My guess would be somewhere in /dev/, but I'm not sure.

[teryret]

Bump/progress report.

In fooling around with it I ran updates on everything and since then regular booting works most of the time. The rest of the time after I provide my login credentials it freezes with a black background with a white bar (same size as the default gnome menubar) at the top. If that happens it will not respond to any keyboard input (even ctrl+alt+del/ctrl+alt+backspace) and must be hard booted. I consider this progress compared to freezing while loading the OS.

Also, I discovered that there is something fishy about my wifi card. In Vista if I have the wifi switch enabled while it boots it will not list any networks, once that happens if I switch the wifi off then back on again they all show up. When I tried the same thing in ubuntu wlan0 started showing up! After cycling the wifi card iwconfig reads:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"" Nickname:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thr=2346 B
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

So, that's major progress. For my next trick I'll get it to list the networks in the area (of which there are many according to vista). Any idea how to do that?

BTW, it turns out to read the log I was looking for in my last post the command is dmesg (which I then pipe into a file).

[jualin]

I am sorry for taking so long to respond, I just started the University and I was moving in to my dorm.
I have been reading your thread and my next suggestion would be to try scanning the wireless networks on your area. Go to the terminal and type

iwlist scan

and it should show the wireless networks in your area. Let me know if you need further help. And keep us posted, I will answer you as soon as I can.