[Gllug] intellinuxwireless

[Philip Hands]

On Wed, 8 Jun 2011 18:42:45 +0100, Patrick Moody <patrickmoody84 at hotmail.com> wrote:
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> 
> Hi Gllugers,
> 
> I'm trying to get the wireless adapter working on my laptop (a HP
> ProBook 4510s) running Debian 6.  It previously worked flawlessly and
> without any setup required from me when using Ubuntu10.04, 10.10 and
> 11.04.  
> 
> I wanted to give Debian a go so I could learn a bit more, so obviously
> the first thing I'm going to have to learn is how to get wireless
> networking working.

That would appear to be what I have in my Thinkpad X200, in which case
you'll need to install firmware-iwlwifi (which is from non-free) to get
the binary blob that will end up in:

  /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode

which when it loads should log something like this to /var/log/messages
(probably):

May 27 09:49:39 poker kernel: [    4.800816] iwlagn: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, 1.3.27ks
May 27 09:49:39 poker kernel: [    4.800818] iwlagn: Copyright(c) 2003-2009 Intel Corporation
May 27 09:49:39 poker kernel: [    4.800939] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
May 27 09:49:39 poker kernel: [    4.801067] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 5100AGN REV=0x54
May 27 09:49:39 poker kernel: [    4.835087] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 24 802.11a channels
May 27 09:50:00 poker kernel: [   33.856281] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: firmware: requesting iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode
May 27 09:50:00 poker kernel: [   33.953918] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: loaded firmware version 8.24.2.12

> I had a look at the HP support page for my model of laptop. It
> provides some .rpm packages for SuSE but nothing for Debian and the
> like.

It's normally a mistake to install stuff from manufacturer's on Debian.
Even if it works, there's normally a better way of doing it that will
survive upgrades etc.

> I googled the adapter model "Intel Wireless WiFi 5100AGN" had a

Actually, why am I typing this lot:

  http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Intel+Wireless+WiFi+5100AGN+debian&l=1

;-)

HTH

> look at Intel's site and found the link to
> http://intellinuxwireless.org/ which says the drivers should already
> be included in all recent Linux kernels since 2.6.24.  I think I'm
> currently on 2.6.32 so the driver's definitely supposed to be there.
> 
> Anyone got any clues where should look next?
> What's different about the way wireless networking gets set up by
> default in Ubuntu and Debian?

They (Ubuntu) are less worried about non-free contamination than Debian,
and so tend to just go ahead and install the non-free stuff without
requiring you to understand what they did to make things work.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND
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