My new T61p has the standard built-in Intel 4965AGN wireless card for 802.11b/g/n goodness. The kernel has had driver support for this hardware since 2.6.24. But, after doing a default Debian Lenny install, the wireless just ain’t working… what gives?
Well, this comes up in /var/log/syslog and others:
iwl4965: iwlwifi-4965-1.ucode firmware file req failed: Reason -2 iwl4965: Could not read microcode: -2
As is explained here, the iwlwifi drivers require a binary firmware (aka microcode) image to function. The drivers themselves are free, both as in beer and as in freedom. However, the microcode images, in order to enforce end-user FCC compliance, are free as in beer but not freedom. Thus a default Debian install, which bends over backwards to be free as in beer and free as in freedom, does not include the microcode images.
Two options:
- Install the firmware image yourself. Find the image you need here (as of August 2008 the version you want was 1.21), download it, extract it, and copy it to /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-4965-1.ucode.
- Or, add the non-free repositories to your /etc/apt/sources.list, and do an
apt-get install firmware-iwlwifi
Or, pretend you didn’t really want wireless if you can’t have it free as in freedom… and put it on your to-do list to reverse-engineer that binary firmware image. Buena suerte! ;p
I can’t remember if a reboot was necessary after installing the microcode image. But that should be it in terms of edits and installs… everything wifi, all the way out to the gnome GUI, should now just automagically work.