Comments on: Intel 3945ABG Wireless / WiFi Card on CentOS 5

By: NetworkUsAll Journal » CentOS 5, VAIO and Wireless

NetworkUsAll Journal » CentOS 5, VAIO and Wireless — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:00:07 +0000

[...] postings to forums about all the tweaks and options other people had tried and failed with, I found this article, that pointed out that CentOS 5 (and for that matter RHEL 5) simply doesn’t have all [...]

By: Lee

Lee — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:42:53 +0000

Please respond to this comment aswell as the above, i forgot to tick the “Notify me of follow up comments via e-mail” button >.<

By: Lee

Lee — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:42:06 +0000

Hey Nick!
I recently formatted my PC and laptop, I already have Windows on my PC so I thought I would give CentOS 5 a try on my laptop.
The laptop had a built in wireless (I have no clue as to how to get information up on it) and it worked fine, but scince I installed centOS it hasn’t worked (Currently using the ethernet cable normally plugged into my PC).

When I run your first line, everything goes fine, same with the second line. However on the third line I get this:
chkconfig –level 345 NetworkManagerDispatcher on
error reading information about service NetworkManagerDispatcher: No such file or directory

Help would be appriciated as this cable isn’t long and it takes the point out of having this laptop

Lee

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:00:06 +0000

With centos 5, I got to the last command and ran into a problem:

[root@localhost ~]# /sbin/chkconfig –level 345 NetworkManagerDispatcher on
error reading information on service NetworkManagerDispatcher: No such file or directory

I rebooted and wifi came up successfully anyway. So, is this “NetworkManagerDispatcer” something
I don’t need?

By: David

David — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:37:17 +0000

Hi Nick, thanks for your help, my laptop is Dell vostro 1400, and after i use “lspci” and “modprobe -l | grep wireless”, it displays :
……
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
……
and
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/airo.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/airo_cs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/atmel.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/atmel_cs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/atmel_pci.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/net/wireless/cfg80211.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/hermes.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/hostap/hostap.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/hostap/hostap_cs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/hostap/hostap_pci.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/hostap/hostap_plx.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ipw2100.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ipw2200.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwl4965.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/netwave_cs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_cs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_nortel.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_plx.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_tmd.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/prism54/prism54.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/spectrum_cs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/wavelan_cs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/wl3501_cs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/zd1201.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-92.el5/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/zd1211rw/zd1211rw.ko

but i don’t know which is the correct driver for 3945abg card?
thanks very much !

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:39:32 +0000

The icon doesn't show any wireless connections because the laptop doesn't think it has any wifi cards... I don't know anything about Dell 1400's but a quick google suggests you need a broadcom driver ....

Card: Dell Truemobile 1400 minipci 802.11a/b/g Chipset: Broadcom BCM4309 (rev 02)

....not an intel one :confused:

By: david

david — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:01:25 +0000

Hi,Nick,I am new to linux/CentOS, i have installed CentOS 5.2 (as a workstation) on a Dell 1400 with 3945abg wireless card, but i could not use wireless service, according to your resolution( install rpmforge; yum install dkms-ipw3945; chkconfig …. and then reboot) , after reboot , i can get a little icon in my system tray, but it shows “Wired network connetction” hint , i can not user it to manage my wireless connection, do you know why it is ?

Thanks !

David

By: Greg

Greg — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:19:42 +0000

A few more bits of messing about (seemingly unrelated) and another restart and everything works now! Go figure. It seemed to take three reboots to work properly, but it did in the end. =)

By: Greg

Greg — Sun, 03 May 2009 13:03:35 +0000

It was a clean install of CentOS, so ran the updater and restarted – now the device is present but cannot be activated. Getting there! Advice still appreciated! =)

By: Greg

Greg — Sun, 03 May 2009 11:12:03 +0000

Hi Nick – thanks for posting this – I installed CentOS 5.2 (as a server) on a Dell Precision M65 with the same wireless device. No errors, but no device either. =(

After reboot I checked the device manager – CentOS still doesn’t think it has a driver for the device and NetworkManager can’t pick it up (obviously). Any suggestions? Don’t really want to go manual until I’m sure NetworkManager won’t work…

Thanks! =)