Intel 3945ABG Wireless / WiFi Card on CentOS 5
Tags: centos, Enterprise Linux, Linux, redhat, wireless
I’ve taken to using CentOS on my servers, and fedora on my Laptop. New job, means new laptop, and to avoid fedora update hell, I thought I’d try CentOS on my laptop.
All seems good other than my wifi card not being detected, and for some reason googling for “centos 5 intel 3945” didn’t provide a working anserwer, actually I found the answer by googling for “supplementary disk centos 5” which finds this thread that says…
Install dag’s repo (this rpm), and then install dkms-ipw3945 (yum will pick up the dependancies)
yum install dkms-ipw3945
Next enable network manager…
chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManager on chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManagerDispatcher on
reboot (seriously) and when you next log in you’ll get a little icon in you system tray where you can manage your WiFi 
26th July, 2007 - 5:24 am
I tried this and it didn’t work for me. I’m running the x86_64 CentOS 5. Are your directions only for the 32 bit CentOS?
30th July, 2007 - 8:38 am
Hi Dean,
Sorry for the late reply, have been very busy lately.
The above should have worked with 64bit, yum is pretty much platform independent, my guess is that one of the RPMs installed wasn’t built correctly. Try uninstalling (check out your yum log for a list of what was installed) and re-building the source rpms on your 64bit machine, then use yum localinstall to get everything installed in the right order.
Good Luck!
27th October, 2007 - 9:48 pm
This is interesting - I didn’t know there was such a wireless manager. So I have the icon and everything, and I can even see the various wireless networks, but when I try to connect to mine, it doesn’t work - it simply doesn’t connect. I know that my wireless works, because I have a dual-boot, and the wireless works on my windows side.
Thanks,
Brian.
29th October, 2007 - 10:52 am
Hi Brian,
To be honest I’ve found my wireless connection to be a bit “Hit & Miss”.. I’ve yet to work out whether it’s an AP problem, driver or NetworkManager. There are a couple of things you can try, firstly don’t use NetworkManager, stick to the standard linux iwconfig & wpa_supplicant, or secondly try restarting the ipw3945 daemon (
/etc/init.d/ipw3945d restart)… even stopping it and running it in a shell has helped in the past (sudo /sbin/ipw3945d --foreground)… actually I’ve found patients works too, after NM has found a wireless wait 30secs -> 1min before trting to connect…. if you come up with any Technical solutions to making the experience better I’d be love to hear them!31st October, 2007 - 12:59 pm
Hi, Nick! I had similar problems with the older versions of NetworkManager and Sabayon Linux 3.4 and the God-awful BroadComm 43xx chipset. As you suggest, waiting about a minute or two before connecting (or connecting, and then immediately connecting again, regardless of the success or failure of the first connection) seems to work. However, one thing that seems to help me out is rebooting the AP. I have a Linksys WR54G (or whatever that one is that used to be Linux-based, but isn’t anymore) and an SMC. Both are a titch flaky, particularly with Linux-based WIFI, and rebooting them seems to help….somewhat.
Of course, if you’re like me, you may have a nasty habit of experimenting with the latest distros as they come out, thereby changing wireless configs on an altogether unreasonably frequent basis, which probably confuses the out of these poor little consumer-grade APs, making the reboots even more necessary…..
22nd November, 2007 - 5:56 am
Hi, I am running Centos 5. I installed all the driver and the wireless works fine. However, there are couple of networks in my university and I couldn’t find an application to select a specific network. I tried your method and reboot my laptop but the icon didn’t come out.
Please advice.
Thanks in advance.
22nd November, 2007 - 9:15 am
That’s odd Tan, Make sure that all the correct services are running:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManagerDispatcher status
NetworkManagerDispatcher (pid 2947) is running...
$ sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager status
NetworkManager (pid 2936) is running...
$ sudo /etc/init.d/ipw3945d status
ipw3945d (pid 1988) is running...
$
And double check that you’ve added the “Notification Area” to the gnome panel
22nd November, 2007 - 10:26 pm
Hi Nick,
Thanks for quick response. I’m running kde.
I tested in Gnome and it works.
Do you know how to get it from kde?
Thanks.
23rd November, 2007 - 9:36 am
Sorry Tan, I don’t use KDE, try taking a look at KNetworkManager hopefully there’s an rpm you can install somewhere on the web.
Good Luck!
27th November, 2007 - 9:20 am
Hello,
I am have an other card : intel 4965 AGN.
I made what you said but no icons appeared in the tray.
Do u have any idea ?
Thx
Romano
21st January, 2008 - 2:49 pm
Hello,
I have intel 3945 wireless card in my laptop, I got my card to show up in NetworkManager. I have issues connecting to my wireless network, I have a wpa/wpa2-psk, the NM prompts for the key but after few seconds it comes back with enter key prompt, I have given the correct password. Could you please suggest what can I check to fix the problem?
Thanks,
Vinod
21st January, 2008 - 3:07 pm
Hi Vinod,
I had the same issue on fedora, I think it’s either due to hidden SSID’s or signal strength
21st January, 2008 - 4:00 pm
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the quick response, well my wireless network SSID isn’t hidden, but still the problem persists. I get this
Activation (eth1/wireless): disconnected during association, asking for new key.
Jan 21 21:20:17 centos NetworkManager: Activation (eth1) New wireless user key requested for network ‘vinbb’
in /var/log/message. I tried with both WPA and WPA2 PSK’s but no luck
, I have changed PSK, but still it doesn’t help
Thanks,
Vinod
6th March, 2008 - 9:54 pm
Hey, I have the same problem with a an Intel 3495 ABG on a TOshiba ProSatellite U300. Pro/Wireless just will not connect with my hidden SSID. Have tried many workarounds, but so far nothing. I’m wondering if there is a better wireless client that I can use rather than the Intel OEM. Do you have any suggestions?
10th May, 2008 - 6:31 pm
Hi Nick,
I am new to linux. I have centos 5 and installed DAG following this link:
http://www.ultranetsolutions.com/CentOS-5-install-rpmforge-yum-repo.html
when i run ‘ yum install dkms-ipw3945 ‘ i see the following:
Loading “installonlyn” plugin
Loading “priorities” plugin
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
Reading repository metadata in from local files
719 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
Parsing package install arguments
Nothing to do
I am unable to see the icon in NM… plz help me to resolve this ..
Thanks
karna
1st July, 2008 - 12:31 pm
Hi, nick
thank a lot for your tutorial. I’m do that all you say and my wifi was active. I can see all the wifi network with network manager. But nick I’m still have one problem that is I can join to wifi network. Can you solve this problem?
Thanks
widhi
8th August, 2008 - 7:51 pm
Hi Nick,
Thanks for putting up this info. I use a laptop as a ‘testbed’ for various distro’s, & a while back installed CentOS 5.2. Using your instructions I got wireless networking running (something I’ve never been able to do before) with the networking applet.
I’ve just re-installed CentOS 5.2, but can’t see the applet any more & have no clue how to set up wireless networing manually. NetworkManager & NetworkManagerDispatcher are running, so I have no clue as to what’s wrong.
There’s not many posts here so I hope you’re still watching this site!!
9th August, 2008 - 4:24 pm
Forget what I just posted, I am seeing Network Manager, I just didn’t know what I was looking at.
I am still having problems in that I’m getting the same error Vinod is seeing (disconnected during association), & no matter how many times I re-enter my PSK it doesn’t connect.
11th August, 2008 - 8:21 am
Hi cloudmaster, yeah the icon’s changing with Distro upgrades can catch us out
One thing I can suggest is try shorting your PSK, I had a very strange problem the other day where one device would connect, but a second wouldn’t… give it a go, you never know your luck!
25th August, 2008 - 8:29 pm
Hi Nick.
The tutorial about wireless is PERFECT.
I’ve installed centos 5.2 in a lenovo t60 but I can’t activate sound card (it seems to be detected but no sound can be heard). Could you help. Thanks
28th August, 2008 - 8:39 am
Hi mongo,
to make sound card works on Centos follow these instructions:
1- import these lines into file with extension .repo
[atrpms]
name=Centos ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/el5-i386/atrpms/stable
gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
gpgcheck=1
includepkgs=alsa-driver alsa-kmdl*
2- copy this file to /etc/yum.repos.d/
3 - run this command to install driver
yum install alsa-driver alsa-kmdl-`uname -r`
4- reboot
for more information use this url http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=195804&mode=linear
3rd September, 2008 - 3:17 pm
Hi,
I’m running CentOS 5.2 on all my machines here (work and home). I have the same problem with an ASUS laptop and an Intel 3945 wireless card. I’m using an unencrypted wireless network for testing. When I setup the card statically in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1, I can connect OK. But the same thing with NetworkManager fails. It just keeps searching and searching, and then times out.
Is there any way to tell NetworkManager not to time out?
28th September, 2008 - 4:47 pm
my intel pro 3945 wifi card not working in centos 5.2.Is any way to install this in lenovo 3000 N200