I always had these thoughts
- Why ubuntu install all the necessary drivers for the intel wireless cards to work automagically after the installation
- Why debian (etch) cant do the same ? why doesn't debian (etch) have the necessary packages in their official repositories.
I was always shying away from installing the firmware, building from the source. But when I found no other way, I ventured to get things done with sourceforge.net and here is how.
Step 1:
- download the ipw3945-1.2.2.tgz from sourceforge.net (http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/)
Step 2:
- Do the following : 'tar -xzf ipw3945-1.2.2.tgz', 'cd ipw3945-1.2.2' and 'less INSTALL'
Remember, most important step is the "less INSTALL' and reading through the instructions.
Finishing it off:
Thank your lucky stars, thank the developers who got these packages for you and last but not least thank sourceforge.net for hosting the ipw3945 page.
PS: If you have followed the 'INSTALL' file precisely you should see the wireless networks in your 'nm-applet' list, when you click on it.
I had to use sudo every here and there, especially when i do the './load' within the 'ipw3945-1.2.2' directory. So use it at abundance, shouldn't hurt you much !
This will only get you started with perfecting the wireless interface configuration. Once the mentioned procedure is completed, you might want the wpasupplicant and other accompanying packages like wpa_gui also for completing the setup.
Update:
After updating my Debian etch DVD's to lenny using jigdo, I installed lenny on the laptop. Once done, I modified the sources.list as below and did a "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade"
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
This updated my kernel to 2.6.24 and it got me the correct wireless drivers (iwlwifi, this is the next life of deprecated ipw3945 driver). Wireless was working fine after the update and the networks were showing up in the nm-applet.
