The Certified Geek

I encountered a problem with wireless device (ipw2200) in my Gentoo laptop after upgrading its firmware. Here is the error what i got from the system:

ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, git-1.0.8
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2005 Intel Corporation
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:06:06.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 177
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: ipw-2.4-boot.fw load failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
ipw2200: failed to register network device

After searching the net for solution, I stumbled upon a Blog which had the same problem and proposed the solution, see
Eric’s Blog on fixing it

After following the recommended steps:

1. Create a file /etc/udev/rules.d/999-firmware.rules and add the text below and save.

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="firmware", RUN+="/sbin/firmware_helper"

Note: the program firmware_helper needs to be installed (check by using which firmware_helper)

2. Unload and reload the modules for the wireless:

# rmmod ipw2200
# rmmod ieee80211
# rmmod ieee80211_crypt
# modprobe ipw2200
# modprobe ieee80211_crypt

3.Check the output of dmesg.

ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, git-1.0.8
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2005 Intel Corporation
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:06:06.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 177
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection

If you get the output above, then your good to go.