Iwlwifi

Intel Wireless WiFi Link drivers for Linux, or iwlwifi, which provides official, Open support for wireless Intel adapters. Initially, it only supported Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Mini-PCI Express Adapter and Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Mini-PCI Express Adapter. More wireless projects are planned to move to this project in the future. The driver works out of the box with a hardware firmware replacement. Full documentation and source is available on this newer driver.

• Old official website (intellinuxwireless.org)
• current Web page, on Linux Wireless wiki (wireless.wiki.kernel.org)

Notes

The previous Intel Wifi driver was named "ipw". Even though the ipw driver is considered deprecated, it is quite stable. If iwlwifi is causing problems (e.g. kernel oops on unloading iwl3945 module, frequent wireless disconnections), the ipw drivers provide a viable alternative. With a patch, the ipw driver works with the newer 2.6.25 kernels as well.

Packages

• Debian
  • Kernel 2.6.29 (maybe 2.6.28) ships the firmware as kernel-module "iwlagn".
  • Debian Unstable (Sid) ships the firmware in the package "firmware-iwlwifi" (version 0.16) in non-free branch.
  • Debian Testing (Squeeze) ships the firmware in the package "firmware-iwlwifi" (version 0.16) in non-free branch.
  • Debian Stable (Lenny) ships the firmware in the package "firmware-iwlwifi" (version 0.14+lenny1) in non-free branch.
  • Debian Oldstable (Etch) ships the firmware in the package "firmware-iwlwifi" (version 0.4+etchnhalf.1) in non-free branch.
  • Debian Etch-Backports ships the firmware in the package "firmware-iwlwifi" (version 0.13~bpo40+1) in non-free branch.

iwl3945

The iwl3945 driver is part of the iwlwifi project to provide support for the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Mini-PCI Express Adapter. The driver is included in recent kernels 2.6.24 and needs a binary firmware image, without which nothing will work, but nothing will complain, either.

For the firmware:

• Debian Sid: the package is firmware-iwlwifi. You will need to append non-free to the deb http://foo sid ... line in your /etc/apt/sources.list.

For Europe:

• Add /etc/modprobe.d/iwl3945-fix with the following content: "options cfg80211 ieee80211_regdom=EU". This will make channels 12 and 13 available. If an access point you know is there is not shown with "iwlist wlan0 scan" and you are in Europe, then this option may be missing.

See also

• Ipw3945

Availability

The iwl3945 driver was integrated into Linux 2.6.24. It needs a binary firmware image that can be obtained from the project homepage or from distribution repositories.