How To Install Intel Pro Wireless 3945 On CentOS Linux
This article has been taken from my blog site http://www.seenone.net.
In this tutorial, I will guide you through the necessary steps to install ipw3945 wireless adapter on a CentOS / RHEL based distribution.It is written for CentOS 5.2. However, it might work on other CentOS 5.x based distributions as well.
Step 1.
You need to have rpmforge-release package installed. You can download it from DAG (http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rpmforge-release/).
Step 2.
yum install ipw3945d ipw3945-firmware dkms dkms-ipw3945 wpa_supplicant
Step 3.
vi /etc/sysconfig/wpa_supplicant
It should look like this;
# wlan0 and wifi0 # INTERFACES="-iwlan0 -iwifi0" #INTERFACES="-iwlan0" INTERFACES="-ieth1" # ndiswrapper and prism # DRIVERS="-Dndiswrapper -Dprism" #DRIVERS="-Dndiswrapper" DRIVERS="-Dwext"
Step 4.
Edit wpa_supplicant.conf. On this example, there are two networks configured and both of them are WPA-1.
vi /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
#ctrl_interface_group=wheel
eapol_version=1
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1
#Work WPA-1
network={
ssid="Fredi"
psk="mysecretpassword" #Pre-shared key here
priority=1
}
#Home WPA-1
network={
ssid="StarDust"
psk="mysecretpassword" #Pre-shared key here
priority=2
}
Step 5.
Create your wireless interface configuration file.
vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1
DEVICE=eth1 BOOTPROTO=dhcp HWADDR=00:00:00:00:00:00 # Your wireless adapters's MACid ONBOOT=no
Tip: To learn your wireless adapter's MACid use
ifconfig -a
Step 6.
Start required services on boot;
chkconfig ipw3945d on
chkconfig wpa_supplicant on
Step 7.
You should modify the startup scripts to change the boot order that work with wpa_supplicant.
vi /etc/init.d/ipw3945d
# chkconfig: 345 10 90
vi /etc/init.d/network
# chkconfig: 2345 13 87
vi /etc/init.d/wpa_supplicant
# chkconfig: - 14 88
To use the new boot order, first disable services, then re-enable.
To disable:
chkconfig network off
chkconfig ipw3945d off
chkconfig wpa_supplicant off
To enable the new boot order;
chkconfig network on
chkconfig ipw3945d on
chkconfig wpa_supplicant on
Step 8.
Also, disable NetworkManager and NetworkManagerDispatcher services.
chkconfig NetworkManager off
chkconfig NetworkManagerDispatcher off
Step 9.
Install dhclient package.
yum install dhclient
Step 10.
Install wpa_gui package. It is an easy to use network configuration application.
yum install wpa_gui
Step 11.
Run wpa_gui application and connect to the network.
wpa_gui &
Step 12.
Try to request an IP address from the network.
dhclient eth1
You should see your IP address on wpa_gui's main window.
Tip: To scan wireless networks, use;
iwlist eth1 scan
Enjoy!