Another plea for help with wireless configuration; nic1394

After several unsuccessful attempts to try to configure my system for wireless service, running Knoppix v. 5.3.1, I am looking for help. I believe that I have been reasonably diligent in seeking out information here and elsewhere, including the seminal Wiki article, but have not yet succeeded in achieving connection. This even includes going down the ndiswrapper path with drivers imported from Windows. So.... I hope that I can give you a reasonable picture of how things stand. Tell me what you need to move this along.

Setup:

HP Pavilion dv5220 laptop; Intel Centrino Duo; nic1394
Knoppix 5.3.1 running from a copy of the Live CD (copied to a partition on a USB hd by cheat code “tohd”). A knoppix image (persistent) resides in that same partition. The system is booted with a “fromhd=” cheat code.

Observations:

When I boot following a Windows session in which the wireless switch has been left in the “on” position, wlan0 is detected in the bootup screen and present in the iwconfig report (copy below); wlan0 is absent in both cases when booting from a previous Windows session where the switch was left off.

Issuing a pump -i wlan0 (switch on condition) yields the response “Operation failed.”

I would note a couple of things. One is that the blue wireless indicator light on the laptop is never seen when running Knoppix. On the other hand.... I also have Mepis 7.0 on my system and have managed to accomplish reliable wireless operation (after struggling a bit but succeeding with the help of Wicd) and the blue visual indicator works as well. Obviously, it is possible to use the native wireless chip despite many comments to the contrary as it regards laptops!

Iwconfig report:


wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

This leads me to ask:

- Can I hope to achieve reliable connectivity in Knoppix with the native chip?

- If not, should I consider a PCMCIA card or USB wireless plugin?

- Can I gain anything by installing Wicd? (Having only dialup as my alternative it's a pain to get packages but I guess that I can get a valid copy on the system)

I appreciate any help that you might be able to give.

Thanks for your time to read this.

Guy Knickerbocker

In an effort to sweeten the pot, at least in the information sense, I am adding the following data, selected excerpts from the indicated commands, in the hope that someone will come up with an idea either for more information or to suggest a resolution of the problem.

lsmod

Module Size Used by
snd_hda_intel 295196 1
iwl3945 95080 0
snd_hwdep 13572 1 snd_hda_intel
mac80211 133388 1 iwl3945

lspci

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
06:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

08:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation PRO/100 VE Network Connection (rev 01)

dmesg

iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for Linux, 1.1.17ks
iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:06:00.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:06:00.0 to 64
iwl3945: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:08:06.2[C] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
iwl3945: Tunable channels: 11 802.11bg, 13 802.11a channels
phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-3945-rs'
warning: process `hwsetup' used the deprecated sysctl system call with 1.23.

Once again, thanks for taking a look at this.

GK