Mageia forum

Hello everybody, I'm new to this forum, Mageia 2 distribution, and also Linux in general. I'm trying to catch up, and I need some basic help about the wireless board configuration. The problem, as you may have read many times, is the Intel WiFi Link 4965agn, and its non-free drivers. After installing Mageia 2 from a USB ISO DVD, the wireless network doesn't work.
Let me say that I know that it's basically easy to solve this problem with an Ethernet connection to the web, but unfortunately to me it's not so easy to get one. So my question is if there's a way to solve that offline (I mean offline in Linux, I can access the internet from Windows).
What I did before opening this help thread is to install the drivers provided here http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/iwlegacy, and I actually think that this made something works, in a way. Indeed I can see the available networks with the Network Manager in Mageia, but when I connect to one, it's prompted a message which advises me to add a medium in the software manager, and I cannot access the internet.

My system is an Acer Aspire 5920G laptop, if it can be useful.

Hope you can give my some suggestions. Thank you.

Well, the dialog should at least tell you which package it wants to install. Or when you run drakconnect from a terminal,
it will also show you which packages it wants to install. As i'm in the same situation (Intel 5100, Acer 5739G, installation from FreeDVD)
and i also don't have easy wired connection (well, easy maybe, but nor for long as my cats would probably chew it down )
i can tell you which packages you need to manually download and install:

iwlwifi-agn-ucode (if you get it from nonfree updates, than it already holds all firmwares for Intel adapters, otherwise you also need the two following packages)
iwlwifi-3945-ucode
iwlwifi-4965-ucode
wireless-regdb
wireless-tools
lib(64)iw29
wpa_supplicant

As you already seem to be able to see/connect to wireless networks, maybe the last one is only needed,
as that is used for storing and managing encryption information.

I'm replying from Mageia

Thank you very much, it worked perfectly after configuring the network with the wizard that drakconnect prompted.
I take advantage of this thread to ask for a related future problem I may have, when I will try to connect to the internet with a WPA-2 Enterprise connection. Running the drakconnect's wizard will help me even in that case?

Well, depends what authentication is used there, do you have more details on that? E.g. certificates, or a RADIUS server, or ... ?
But generally, you can just re-run drakconnect on your wireless interface, and select WPA2-Enterprise, to see what it supports
in advanced settings there, and then just cancel it, then it will change nothing.

It's just a university network. Does it sound familiar to you the name "Eduroam"?
When I set up the connection in Windows I don't need to use any certificate, and I actually don't know what the RADIUS server is, but it could be that it's needed for that network. It's a bit a crazy thing because sometimes it works if you uncheck the validation of the server certificate (I'm translating now, so I don't know if it sounds like that in English version OS), sometimes it works only if you leave it checked, and automatically it finds out that it needs to connect to a RADIUS server of the university, with an Equifax security certificate.
Well, I'll try very soon, so in case of problems I'll come back here and write down what will have happened

Thank you!

fingolfin00 wrote:It's just a university network. Does it sound familiar to you the name "Eduroam"?

Yes, rings some bells, use the search function to find relevant threads: https://forums.mageia.org/en/search.php?keywords=eduroam&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sr=topics&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search