Booting with the virtualbox kernel module disturbs the wireless lan

[Thomas]

Binary package hint: virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.22-14-generic

After installing the package virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.22 on Ubuntu 7.10 the network-manager couldn't set up the wireless anymore. Ifconfig shows only wired and modem connection. The wireless connection is missing. I'm not good at reading log-files but when I boot the system with Ubuntu 7.10 kernel 2.6.22-14-generic or with Ubuntu 7.10 kernel 2.6.22-14-386 and examine the kernel ring buffer with the command dmesg I can see that the ipw2200 driver is unable to load the required firmware.

-----booting with Ubuntu 7.10 kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
[ 20.012000] ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
[ 20.120000] ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2
[ 20.120000] ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
[ 20.120000] ipw2200: failed to register network device
[ 20.120000] ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:01:02.0 disabled
[ 20.120000] ipw2200: probe of 0000:01:02.0 failed with error -5
[ 20.216000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.5[B] -> Link [LNKB] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10

-----booting with Ubuntu 7.10 kernel 2.6.22-14-386
[ 25.852000] ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
[ 26.192000] ipw2200: Detected geography ZZM (11 802.11bg channels, 0 802.11a channels)
[ 26.328000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.5[B] -> Link [LNKB] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10

[Thomas (t-honegger)]

I did a very stupid thing but it worked. I copied the directory with the firmwares:

                 sudo cp -r /lib/firmware/2.6.22-14-386 /lib/firmware/2.6.22-14-generic

Now it works. The problem was, that the driver couldn't find the appropriate firmware "ipw2200-bss.fw", which was in the /lib/firmware/ directory. The bug is still a bug because the driver should find the firmware without renaming the directory manually.

Hope to hear from you
Thomas

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

Are you sure that you only installed virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.22-14-generic and not switched to e.g. the generic kernel in general in this process?
I'm asking, because it looks like you've been using the -386 kernel flavor before and now switched to the -generic one.
Please make sure that you have linux-ubuntu-modules-*-generic installed for your kernel.

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

I'm marking this as duplicate of bug 188579, because it's very likely that a wrong kernel image (without modules) got pulled in.
You can fix it, by removing the -386 kernel image and installing virtualbox-ose-modules-generic instead.
Make sure though, that you have the -generic (or another kernel image) installed.