Debian and zd1211 wifi

Aug 6, 2008

Hello,
I’m using debian lenny and I’ve got these two problems:

With versions of the linux kernel prior to 2.6.20 (maybe) I could install zd1211 firmware using the module-assistant which has been now dropped from testing and unstable.
Boot process slowed down by 30 seconds and couldn’t plug-in the usb pen because udev/hal screw up

What I’ve done is to remove the source and its created firmware, with the one shipped with testing and unstable (bug #411912):

aptitude remove –purge zd1211-firmware zd1211-source
aptitude update
m-a clean zd1211
aptitude install zd1211-firmware

Now let’s fix the hotplug part, open /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules and remove similar lines:

# USB device 0ace:1215 (zd1211rw)
SUBSYSTEM==“net”, DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}==“00:1d:0f:b3:66:f7”, NAME=“eth2”

Now try to detach and reattach your usb pen and everything should magically work.

Thanks to Nss (#debianizzati), dcbw NetworkManager developer and gsimmons (#debian).