Acer D257 laptop - any tips to get wireless working? (iwl)

raindog308 · Post by **raindog308** » 2011/10/05 22:02:02

I have an Acer D257 laptop. Trying to get CentOS 6 x86_64 going on it.

The wireless is an iwl-1000. I tried OpenBSD on it and that is the firmware that made the wireless work in that OS.

In CentOS, looking in dmesg, I see r8169 loaded for eth0, the Realtek 8101e wired ethernet driver. I don't see anything that looks like it's loaded for the wireless. I do have iwl1000-firmware rpm installed...in face, I think all the iwl*-firmware rpms were installed during installation. I don't see a wlan0 in ifconfig -a.

I tried modprobing iwlagn, iwlcore, and iwl3945 (only things I could find in /lib/modules/2.6.32*/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi) but that made no difference.

I'm really not sure what else I should try...?

raindog308 · Post by **raindog308** » 2011/10/05 23:10:23

On further analysis, it looks like it's an Intel N100.

Which requires a later kernel...grrr...specifically 2.6.37

http://intellinuxwireless.org/

Is there any option to get it working with CentOS or do I need to look at a different distro?

AlanBartlett · Post by **AlanBartlett** » 2011/10/06 00:48:05

May we see the [b]Vendor:Device ID Pairing[/b] (a.k.a. the [i]device fingerprint[/i]) for your WiFi controller, please?

Hint: [url=http://elrepo.org/tiki/FAQ]ELRepo FAQ #4[/url].

raindog308 · Post by **raindog308** » 2011/10/06 07:17:59

It's 8086:08ae...which unfortunately does not appear on the DeviceIDs page.

This page:

http://intellinuxwireless.org/

...seems to indicate that kernel 2.6.37 is required.

Booting the Fedora 15 LiveCD says "Detected Intel(r\R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 100 BGN, REV=0x6C". Of course, that's kernel 2.6.38.

Am I out of luck for CentOS?

AlanBartlett · Post by **AlanBartlett** » 2011/10/07 04:01:12

On checking with my laptop running [b]RHEL 6.1[/b] I see the following --

[code]
[ajb@Duo2 ~]$ grep -i 8086 /lib/modules/*/modules.alias | grep -i 08ae
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001017bc*sc*i* iwlagn
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001007bc*sc*i* iwlagn
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001025bc*sc*i* iwlagn
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001005bc*sc*i* iwlagn
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.17.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001017bc*sc*i* iwlagn
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.17.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001007bc*sc*i* iwlagn
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.17.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001025bc*sc*i* iwlagn
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.17.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001005bc*sc*i* iwlagn
[ajb@Duo2 ~]$
[/code]
So it will be supported in [b]CentOS 6.1[/b]. Whilst waiting for that release, you could obtain and run the latest [b]Scientific Linux 6[/b] kernel on your [b]CentOS 6..0[/b] system . . . :-)

r_hartman · Post by **r_hartman** » 2011/10/07 07:00:43

On CentOS 6.0 with the latest CR-repo updates that command yields:
[code]$ grep -i 8086 /lib/modules/*/modules.alias | grep -i 08ae
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001017bc*sc*i* iwlagn
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001007bc*sc*i* iwlagn
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001025bc*sc*i* iwlagn
/lib/modules/2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64/modules.alias:alias pci:v00008086d000008AEsv*sd00001005bc*sc*i* iwlagn[/code]
So it would appear that 6.0 + CR supports it als well.

AlanBartlett · Post by **AlanBartlett** » 2011/10/07 20:38:48

Yes, thank you for checking, [b]Ren?[/b]. That is a [b]6.1[/b] kernel, present in the [url=https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=33458&forum=53]CR[/url]. :-)

CentOS