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Date:      Fri, 25 Nov 2005 00:22:20 +0100
From:      Hans Nieser <hans@nieser.net>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Troubles getting firmware for ipw (wifi) driver to load
Message-ID:  <43864B2C.3020708@nieser.net>

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Hi list,

I'm trying to setup wireless networking with WPA for my Dell Inspiron 
510m, which is equipped with an Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 MiniPCI NIC on 
FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE. I'm following this guide: 
http://www.freebsdmall.com/~loader/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/wireless/article.html 

(Also with the handbook chapter on wireless networking on the side)

I am encountering troubles when executing the command "ifconfig ipw0 up 
scan", it doesn't list any APs at all. Looking at my dmesg output, it 
seems that ipw0 needs a firmware.

ipw0: <Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 MiniPCI> mem 0xfcffe000-0xfcffefff irq 9 
at device 3.0 on pci1
ipw0: Ethernet address: 00:0c:f1:52:fe:88
ipw0: Please load firmware

Not knowing exactly what that meant I checked ipw(4) and it does indeed 
say I need ipwcontrol to load the firmware. I found this in the portstree 
at net/ipw-firmware, but it won't install saying:

root@aphax-laptop:/usr/ports/net/ipw-firmware# make install clean
===>  ipw-firmware-1.3_4 ipw(4) support is already included in your tree.
===>  Cleaning for ipw-firmware-1.3_4

Yet ipwcontrol is nowhere to be found (tried to locate it with an updated 
DB, but no luck). It's not there in the output of pkg_version either. I 
did however CTRL+C right after the options screen when trying to install 
this port the first time because I forgot to check the option. Maybe this 
broke things, but I did try make clean / make distclean / make config to 
try ti fix it but alas.. maybe it really isn't supposed to install.

So this leaves the question, how do I load the firmware? Should I manually 
download the thing, or is there some way I can make the port work?



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