Patchy wifi 11.1

[Brother_Shrike]

I am dual booting 11.1 with XP, and my wifi connection works only about half of the time in linux. I have been setting it up with the "Edit Connections" dialog from the system tray. When it doesn't work, rebooting usually solves the problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[lwfinger]

Brother Shrike wrote:
> I am dual booting 11.1 with XP, and my wifi connection works only about
> half of the time in linux. I have been setting it up with the "Edit
> Connections" dialog from the system tray. When it doesn't work,
> rebooting usually solves the problem.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions?

Are there any indications from the output of the 'dmesg' command?

[Brother_Shrike]

Yup. Here is what I see that seems to be related to wifi. I can give you the full output if you need it as well. I have a ThinkPad T42. I'm not sure what make of wireless card I have but I'll find out. Anyway, the output:

sysctl net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_acct=1 to enable it.
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
NET: Registered protocol family 17
pci 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0
vendor=8086 device=3341
pci 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[drm] Initialized radeon 1.29.0 20080528 on minor 0
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: AGP 2.0 bridge
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 4x mode
pci 0000:01:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 4x mode
[drm] Setting GART location based on new memory map
[drm] Loading R100 Microcode
[drm] writeback test succeeded in 2 usecs
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08
wlan0: authenticated
wlan0: associate with AP 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08
wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08 (capab=0x461 status=0 aid=1)
wlan0: associated
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready
ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3
ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
bootsplash: status on console 0 changed to on
wlan0: deauthenticated
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08
wlan0: authentication with AP 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08 timed out

Thanks a lot.

I think what happened at the end is that I deleted my connection and then ran the add connection dialog again... I can reboot and run dmesg again if that helps.

[lwfinger]

Brother Shrike wrote:
> wlan0: deauthenticated
> wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08
> wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08
> wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08
> wlan0: authentication with AP 00:12:0e:3f:a4:08 timed out
>
> Thanks a lot.
>
> I think what happened at the end is that I deleted my connection and
> then ran the add connection dialog again... I can reboot and run dmesg
> again if that helps.

The output from dmesg is always available, and it contains much of the
diagnostic information.

In your case, your wireless is associating, but not authenticating. That usually
means that the encryption key is wrong, but it may also mean that wpa_supplicant
is not installed. As yours sometimes works, the key should be OK. Perhaps
something is faulty with NetworkManager or the supplicant. It is also highly
dependent on dbus. Have you tried reinstalling those components?

Larry

[Brother_Shrike]

Now it never works, but I think that that is because I messed with the settings in Yast...

Sorry, I just saw the wireless subforum and your very useful sticky. Following that, I did everything you told me to.

Device: saved the info on my linux partition, not my windows partition. I will find this out and post it here.

dmesg: same deal here. Will post info soon. The firmware was fine, though.

iwconfig: The ESSID had the correct value, and the access point had a value, but I didn't check to make sure it was correct or anything.

iwconfig scan: All of my neighborhood's routers were listed, even though they aren't in KNetworkManager... I will put in the results soon.


Rebooting now and saving the info to my windows partition...

[Brother_Shrike]

I got all of the information, only a little bit later than I meant to, sorry.

Here it is:

PCI vendor and product ID codes: (/sbin/lspci -n)
02:02.0 0200: 168c:1014 (rev 01)
The card is an Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

dmesg | less
the device was found, and I didn't see any lines about missing firmware...

/usr/sbin/iwconfig
wlan0 IEEE 802.11abg ESSID:"Keeth"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:18:39:75:85:FA
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=23 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thr=2352 B
Power Managementff
Link Quality=56/100 Signal level:-67 dBm Noise level=-103 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sudo /usr/sbin/iwlist scan
Cell 01 - Address: 00:18:39:75:85:FA
ESSID:"Keeth"
Mode:Master
Channel:6
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality=53/100 Signal level:-70 dBm Noise level=-104 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
Extra:tsf=0000047e00066e3b
Extra: Last beacon: 3644ms ago

I left out all of my neighbors' APs here, as I didn't think that they were relevant.

I tried what the guide said next about deleting the card in Yast, but I wasn't prompted to set it up when I rebooted. I set it up manually, but it still doesn't work, unfortunately. Do you have any other ideas?

[megakelvin]

I had a similar problem, and tried every solution on this forum.

In the end, disabling "auto-connect" on the last step of the wireless connection wizard cleared up the problem.

[Brother_Shrike]

Originally Posted by megakelvin

I had a similar problem, and tried every solution on this forum.

In the end, disabling "auto-connect" on the last step of the wireless connection wizard cleared up the problem.

I'll try that and get back to you. Thanks for letting me know.

[lwfinger]

Your previous message indicated that your interface had connected with your AP.
You should look at the output of 'dmesg | grep wlan'. That should show your
device associating and authenticating. Perhaps your problem will be listed there.

Larry

[Brother_Shrike]

Unfortunately, unchecking autoconnect didn't help.

Here are the results of "dmesg | grep wlan":

wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:18:39:75:85:fa
wlan0: authenticated
wlan0: associate with AP 00:18:39:75:85:fa
wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:18:39:75:85:fa (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=1)
wlan0: associated

Thanks for all of your help.