[gentoo-user] ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[gentoo-user] ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[fire-eyes]

I am having a very irritating problem with the wireless driver and card 
above. Sometimes, but not all the times, it gets into this phase where 
the wireless drops, comes back, drops, comes back (etc) and eventually I 
start seeing this in kernel logs:

ipw2200: Firmware error detected.  Restarting.

Unloading and reloading the module does not stop the issue, when it has 
begun. I have done some searching, and the typical advice is to make 
sure hardware crypto is off, by loading it like so:

modprobe -v ipw2200 hwcrypto=0

However this never stops it, or even causes it to calm down a bit.

The most frustrating thing, is that this does not happen all the time. I 
use multiple wireless networks. All of them wide open, except for one, 
which was mine at home with WPA. That AP since bricked (warning: avoid 
LInksys WRT54G v5's, i'm not the only one this happened to) so I can no 
loner test. But when I used it, i saw the same things as I am describing 
here.

Software and Hardware information:
IBM Thinkpad T43
Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g
Kernel 2.6.18.1-ifc (ifc is a very small intel fan control patch)
ipw2200-1.2.0
ipw2200-firmware-3.0
wpa_supplicant-0.5.5

Any ideas out there? I have talked to others who have seen this, and 
none of them ever solved it...

Gentoo Specific Information (some of this may be useful to others too)

Portage 2.1.2_pre3-r3 (default-linux/x86/2006.1/desktop, gcc-4.1.1, 
glibc-2.4-r3, 2.6.18.1-ifc i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.18.1-ifc i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.86GHz
Gentoo Base System version 1.12.5
Last Sync: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 02:20:01 +0000
distcc 2.18.3 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) 
[enabled]
ccache version 2.3 [enabled]
app-admin/eselect-compiler: [Not Present]
dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.0.30
dev-lang/python:     2.4.3-r4
dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5
dev-util/ccache:     2.3
dev-util/confcache:  [Not Present]
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.18.1
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.60
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2
sys-devel/binutils:  2.17
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.13-r4
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.22
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.17-r1
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-Os -march=pentium-m -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/NX/etc /usr/NX/home /usr/kde/3.5/env 
/usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/X11/xkb 
/usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ 
/usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ 
/usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/gconf 
/etc/java-config/vms/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo"
CXXFLAGS="-Os -march=pentium-m -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoconfig ccache distcc distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox 
sfperms strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/ 
ftp://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo 
http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo"
LINGUAS="en"
MAKEOPTS="-j5"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times 
--compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats 
--timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="x86 3dnow X a52 alsa berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cairo cdr chroot cli 
cracklib crypt dbus dlloader dri dv dvd dvdr dvdread eds elibc_glibc 
emboss encode fam ffmpeg firefox flac fortran gdbm gif gpm gstreamer gtk 
gtk2 hal input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse 
input_devices_synaptics isdnlog jpeg kde kdeenablefinal kernel_linux 
libg++ linguas_en mad mikmod mmx mp3 mpeg ncurses network nls nptl 
nptlonly ogg opengl oss pam pcre pdflib perl png ppds pppd pwdb python 
qt3 qt4 quicktime readline reflection sdl session spell spl sse ssl svg 
theora tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode usb 
userland_GNU video_cards_ati video_cards_fglrx video_cards_radeon vorbis 
win32codecs xml xml2 xorg xv xvid zlib"
Unset:  CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, 
LDFLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
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Re: [gentoo-user] ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[Ovidiu Bivolaru]

I'm interested in IFC patch. Where did you get it ? Thanks.

Regards,
Ovidiu

fire-eyes wrote:
> I am having a very irritating problem with the wireless driver and
> card above. Sometimes, but not all the times, it gets into this phase
> where the wireless drops, comes back, drops, comes back (etc) and
> eventually I start seeing this in kernel logs:
>
> ipw2200: Firmware error detected.  Restarting.
>
> Unloading and reloading the module does not stop the issue, when it
> has begun. I have done some searching, and the typical advice is to
> make sure hardware crypto is off, by loading it like so:
>
> modprobe -v ipw2200 hwcrypto=0
>
> However this never stops it, or even causes it to calm down a bit.
>
> The most frustrating thing, is that this does not happen all the time.
> I use multiple wireless networks. All of them wide open, except for
> one, which was mine at home with WPA. That AP since bricked (warning:
> avoid LInksys WRT54G v5's, i'm not the only one this happened to) so I
> can no loner test. But when I used it, i saw the same things as I am
> describing here.
>
> Software and Hardware information:
> IBM Thinkpad T43
> Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g
> Kernel 2.6.18.1-ifc (ifc is a very small intel fan control patch)
> ipw2200-1.2.0
> ipw2200-firmware-3.0
> wpa_supplicant-0.5.5
>
> Any ideas out there? I have talked to others who have seen this, and
> none of them ever solved it...
>
> Gentoo Specific Information (some of this may be useful to others too)
>
> Portage 2.1.2_pre3-r3 (default-linux/x86/2006.1/desktop, gcc-4.1.1,
> glibc-2.4-r3, 2.6.18.1-ifc i686)
> =================================================================
> System uname: 2.6.18.1-ifc i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.86GHz
> Gentoo Base System version 1.12.5
> Last Sync: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 02:20:01 +0000
> distcc 2.18.3 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port
> 3632) [enabled]
> ccache version 2.3 [enabled]
> app-admin/eselect-compiler: [Not Present]
> dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.0.30
> dev-lang/python:     2.4.3-r4
> dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5
> dev-util/ccache:     2.3
> dev-util/confcache:  [Not Present]
> sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.18.1
> sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.60
> sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2
> sys-devel/binutils:  2.17
> sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.13-r4
> sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.22
> virtual/os-headers:  2.6.17-r1
> ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
> AUTOCLEAN="yes"
> CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
> CFLAGS="-Os -march=pentium-m -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
> CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
> CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/NX/etc /usr/NX/home /usr/kde/3.5/env
> /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/X11/xkb
> /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/
> /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/
> /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/"
> CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/gconf
> /etc/java-config/vms/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo"
> CXXFLAGS="-Os -march=pentium-m -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
> DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
> FEATURES="autoconfig ccache distcc distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox
> sfperms strict"
> GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/
> ftp://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo
> http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo"
> LINGUAS="en"
> MAKEOPTS="-j5"
> PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
> PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times
> --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats
> --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
> PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
> PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
> PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
> SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
> USE="x86 3dnow X a52 alsa berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cairo cdr chroot
> cli cracklib crypt dbus dlloader dri dv dvd dvdr dvdread eds
> elibc_glibc emboss encode fam ffmpeg firefox flac fortran gdbm gif gpm
> gstreamer gtk gtk2 hal input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse
> input_devices_synaptics isdnlog jpeg kde kdeenablefinal kernel_linux
> libg++ linguas_en mad mikmod mmx mp3 mpeg ncurses network nls nptl
> nptlonly ogg opengl oss pam pcre pdflib perl png ppds pppd pwdb python
> qt3 qt4 quicktime readline reflection sdl session spell spl sse ssl
> svg theora tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode usb
> userland_GNU video_cards_ati video_cards_fglrx video_cards_radeon
> vorbis win32codecs xml xml2 xorg xv xvid zlib"
> Unset:  CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL,
> LDFLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

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Re: [gentoo-user] ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[fire-eyes]

Ovidiu Bivolaru wrote:
> I'm interested in IFC patch. Where did you get it ? Thanks.

Well, it's IBM Fan Control patch, not Intel Fan Control, so I was wrong.
not sure if it will work outside of an IBM Thinkpad.

I looked and looked, but I can't seem to find this patch. So I'll just
post the source.

It says it's for 2.6.15 but I have it working fine on 2.6.18.1, it just
mentions it was offset by a few lines.

http://fire-eyes.org/ibm-fan-control-2.6.15-any.patch

Please let me know when you have downloaded it, or if you still wanted
it at all.
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Re: [gentoo-user] ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[Ovidiu Bivolaru]

I did. Thanks. 
You can find newer version here:
http://thinkwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code/ibm-acpi-0.12a-2.6.17-fan.patch

Regards,
Ovidiu

fire-eyes wrote:
> Ovidiu Bivolaru wrote:
>   
>> I'm interested in IFC patch. Where did you get it ? Thanks.
>>     
>
> Well, it's IBM Fan Control patch, not Intel Fan Control, so I was wrong.
> not sure if it will work outside of an IBM Thinkpad.
>
> I looked and looked, but I can't seem to find this patch. So I'll just
> post the source.
>
> It says it's for 2.6.15 but I have it working fine on 2.6.18.1, it just
> mentions it was offset by a few lines.
>
> http://fire-eyes.org/ibm-fan-control-2.6.15-any.patch
>
> Please let me know when you have downloaded it, or if you still wanted
> it at all.
>   

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Re: [gentoo-user] ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[fire-eyes]

Ovidiu Bivolaru wrote:
> I did. Thanks. 
> You can find newer version here:
> http://thinkwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code/ibm-acpi-0.12a-2.6.17-fan.patch

Good catch, thanks :)
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[gentoo-user] Re: ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[7v5w7go9ub0o]

Hope that you get a more useful response.... FWIW, I Had precisely these  
symptoms on my Sony 2200 laptop - and can't tell you why - but it is rock  
sold now. I think there were two things going on:

1. This might be a "kill" switch? Some of my problems were certainly due  
to the kill switch.  I finally noticed that the little wireless LEDs were  
off. I had turned them off while using the windows OS - given that it is  
susceptable to the wonderful new driver attacks - and had failed to turn  
it on when booting up hardened Linux (which I believe is NOT susectable to  
the driver buffer overflows).

2. I also suggest a step by step walk-through of the following page (check  
your kernel config).

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_ipw2200

P.S. Contrary to their suggestion, I emerged the latest driver/firmware  
 from portage.

Newbie. (HTH; good luck.)

On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:38:04 -0400, fire-eyes <sgtphou@fire-eyes.org>  
wrote:

> I am having a very irritating problem with the wireless driver and card  
> above. Sometimes, but not all the times, it gets into this phase where  
> the wireless drops, comes back, drops, comes back (etc) and eventually I  
> start seeing this in kernel logs:
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[fire-eyes]

7v5w7go9ub0o wrote:
> Hope that you get a more useful response.... FWIW, I Had precisely these
> symptoms on my Sony 2200 laptop - and can't tell you why - but it is
> rock sold now. I think there were two things going on:
> 
> 1. This might be a "kill" switch? Some of my problems were certainly due
> to the kill switch.  I finally noticed that the little wireless LEDs
> were off. I had turned them off while using the windows OS - given that
> it is susceptable to the wonderful new driver attacks - and had failed
> to turn it on when booting up hardened Linux (which I believe is NOT
> susectable to the driver buffer overflows).
> 
> 2. I also suggest a step by step walk-through of the following page
> (check your kernel config).
> 
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_ipw2200
> 
> P.S. Contrary to their suggestion, I emerged the latest driver/firmware
> from portage.

Thanks for the reply.

I don't have a physical switch, but perhaps there is a software switch.
This laptop has never run windows, so I can't say that is a factor.

I had not seen that wiki, i'll give it a look. I also use the drivers
from portage, the in-kernel ones are just too old and always have been.
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[William Kenworthy]

On Sun, 2006-10-29 at 11:11 -0500, fire-eyes wrote:
> 7v5w7go9ub0o wrote:

> I don't have a physical switch, but perhaps there is a software switch.
> This laptop has never run windows, so I can't say that is a factor.
> 

Using the ipw220 (sony vaio), it generates a message
in /var/log/messages and dmesg saying the killwitch must be off for
wireless to work.  If the killswitch is off (wireless working), there is
no message in either.


This is with the in-kernel drivers.

BillK

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[fire-eyes]

William Kenworthy wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-10-29 at 11:11 -0500, fire-eyes wrote:
>> 7v5w7go9ub0o wrote:
> 
>> I don't have a physical switch, but perhaps there is a software switch.
>> This laptop has never run windows, so I can't say that is a factor.
>>
> 
> Using the ipw220 (sony vaio), it generates a message
> in /var/log/messages and dmesg saying the killwitch must be off for
> wireless to work.  If the killswitch is off (wireless working), there is
> no message in either.
> 
> 
> This is with the in-kernel drivers.
> 
> BillK

Ahh okay, I use the external drivers.

I do have chances to test it now, as I got my wireless working again
back home. Linksys wrt54g v5 bricked (avoid those!), or so I thought it
did... stuck dd-wrt 23 SP 2 on it, and it's working VERY nicely...

Hopefully I won't keep having these issues, we'll see... but history
says I will.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: ipw2200 + Intel Pro Wireless 2915 a/b/g: "ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting."

[William Kenworthy]

On Sun, 2006-10-29 at 19:59 -0500, fire-eyes wrote:
> William Kenworthy wrote:
> > On Sun, 2006-10-29 at 11:11 -0500, fire-eyes wrote:
> >> 7v5w7go9ub0o wrote:
> > 
> >> I don't have a physical switch, but perhaps there is a software switch.
> >> This laptop has never run windows, so I can't say that is a factor.
> >>
> > 
> > Using the ipw220 (sony vaio), it generates a message
> > in /var/log/messages and dmesg saying the killwitch must be off for
> > wireless to work.  If the killswitch is off (wireless working), there is
> > no message in either.
> > 
> > 
> > This is with the in-kernel drivers.
> > 
> > BillK
> 
> Ahh okay, I use the external drivers.
> 
> I do have chances to test it now, as I got my wireless working again
> back home. Linksys wrt54g v5 bricked (avoid those!), or so I thought it
> did... stuck dd-wrt 23 SP 2 on it, and it's working VERY nicely...
> 
> Hopefully I won't keep having these issues, we'll see... but history
> says I will.
> 

I think the drivers are the same - just the kernel lags the sourceforge
project.  I originally used the ext ones as in-kernel didnt work for me,
but the latest kernels seem fine (though the data transfer rates seem
quite a lot slower and less sensitive?)

BillK

-- 
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