[karmic] wlan doesn´t work (Lucent/Agere 6.06)

[Jari J. Lehtinen]

Binary package hint: linux-firmware

My laptop(F-S AmiloA7600) has a WLAN-card in the PCMCIA-slot of type "Lucent/Agere 6.06" (as Firmware determined by orinoco_cs 1.0) or commercially named Lucent WaveLan.

I have tried both Ubuntu Karmic with the kernel 2.6.31-11 and Xubuntu Karmic with kernel 2.6.31-12. The WLAN doesn´t work, it doesn´t show any WLAN-networks as it should.

The hardware works fine with XUBUNTU Jaunty.

I think the reason is missing firmware agere_sta_fw.bin as reported in the attached kern.log. See the end of the log, lines starting with Eth1.

Yours

Jari J.Lehtinen
an elder(50yrs) PC-pro from Turku Finland, with four years experience of Ubuntu

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. If you could test the current Ubuntu development version or even the final version of Ubuntu 9.10, this would help us a lot. If you can test it, and it is still an issue, we would appreciate if you could upload updated logs by running apport-collect 451249, and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Jari J. Lehtinen (jari-j-lehtinen-gmail)]

The information I have given should be enough. The driver is simply missing from the current installation medias and repos.

I could make the pcmcia-wlan-card to operate perfectly wit Ubuntu 9.10 by loading the driver from the net and adding it to /lib/frmware with the name requested by the kernel (agere_sta_fw.bin).

Note thet there are two different versions of the driiver available of which the other one is erroneus somehow. The working one is obvious if you read the texts thoughtfully.

[Chase Douglas (chasedouglas)]

@Jari:

I've built a test package of linux-firmware with the agere firmware included. Please install my ppa by running 'sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chasedouglas/linux-firmware". Then run 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get install linux-firmware'. The agere firmware should then be available. If all works well, please respond, and I will work to get it released for Karmic.

FYI, the agere firmware is in the Lucid linux-firmware package already.

Thanks

[Jari J. Lehtinen (jari-j-lehtinen-gmail)]

Hey Chase

I have tested with the Karmic ppa-repos as suggested, and the dongle works fine with the "new" firmware (and the firmware-file is of same size as my previous one, dug from the net), so you can get it released for Karmic.

I tested also Xubuntu Lucid Beta1 desktop-live and according to kern.log the firmware is present there too.

Thanks

Jari

P.S. FYI: I have to use wicd, becuse the network-manager is unable to operate sensibly in an enviroment where there are many basestations with the same SSID operating on different channels. In my current wlan-environment @utu.fi the nm obviously connects to weak station on channel 1 although the nearest basestation operates at channel 11 and the connection drops and connects all the time. In nm it is not possible to choose the right connection by hand, or not even see the available channel information. With wicd I can choose the network and the channel and use the net. The drawback with wicd is the current lack of vpn-connections.

[Chase Douglas (chasedouglas)]

We aren't actively support karmic for new features (such as support for hardware), and the firmware exists in Lucid and Maverick, so moving to Fix Released.