[wireless-tools] Cannot use channel 12 or 13 of wifi in a region where it is legal

[Peter]

Binary package hint: wireless-tools

error indicating invalid argument is received when attempting to set the channel to 12 or 13 even though these are legal channels for use in South Africa. these channels are desirable for the reason that a number of OSs limit access based on teh region settings of the computer and as a result these channels are usually low on noise and interference.

root@peters-laptop:/home/peters# iwconfig 'eth1' 'channel' '13'
Error for wireless request "Set Frequency" (8B04) :
    SET failed on device eth1 ; Invalid argument.
root@peters-laptop:/home/peters# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.04
Release: 8.04
root@peters-laptop:/home/peters#
root@peters-laptop:/home/peters#

[Johan Walles (walles)]

iwconfig is part of wireless-tools, not network-manager:

johan@transwarp:~$ dlocate iwconfig
wireless-tools: /sbin/iwconfig
[...]

[ThyMythos (thymythos)]

Same here:

$ dmesg | grep iwl
[ 15.640638] iwlagn: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, 1.3.27ks
[ 15.640641] iwlagn: Copyright(c) 2003-2008 Intel Corporation
[ 15.725688] iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
[ 15.725724] iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[ 15.725774] iwlagn: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 5300AGN REV=0x24
[ 15.755323] iwlagn: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 24 802.11a channels
[ 15.755525] iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: PCI INT A disabled
[ 15.755830] phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-agn-rs'
[ 27.852362] iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
[ 27.852459] iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100102, writing 0x100106)
[ 27.852623] firmware: requesting iwlwifi-5000-1.ucode
[ 30.069404] Registered led device: iwl-phy0:radio
[ 30.070233] Registered led device: iwl-phy0:assoc
[ 30.071017] Registered led device: iwl-phy0:RX
[ 30.072131] Registered led device: iwl-phy0:TX

So the wireless card is not the problem, it would let me select 13 channels, but:

$ sudo iwconfig wlan0 channel 13
Error for wireless request "Set Frequency" (8B04) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

It seem to be related to the cfg80211 kernel module:

$ cat /sys/module/cfg80211/parameters/ieee80211_regdom
US

I could set it by hand, but the official way seems to be a deamon. See http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/Documentation/cfg80211
and
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/nl80211

[Jens Gottfried (jug)]

Possible workaround for europe:

Put the following line in your /etc/modprobe.d/options
options cfg80211 ieee80211_regdom="EU"

Then reload the module iwl4965 or iwl3945 and channels 12 & 13 should work again.
This option ought to be set automatically...

See also: http://www.intellinuxwireless.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1713