Wireless connection lost when laptop lid is closed

Hi,

I am facing a problem in that when I close the lid of my laptop(Dell studio xps) after a while the wifi connection is lost.

I want to close the laptop lid at night if I am downloading something and let it run and complete the downloads.

I do not want to keep the lid open, cos obviously I will not be able to sleep with the laptop in the same room.

I have setup the profile to not do anything when the lid is closed but wifi connection is lost.

Can anyone help me out with this?

Regards,
Prad

On 03/27/2012 11:36 AM, Prad viking wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am facing a problem in that when I close the lid of my laptop(Dell
> studio xps) after a while the wifi connection is lost.
>
> I want to close the laptop lid at night if I am downloading something
> and let it run and complete the downloads.
>
> I do not want to keep the lid open, cos obviously I will not be able to
> sleep with the laptop in the same room.
>
> I have setup the profile to not do anything when the lid is closed but
> wifi connection is lost.
>
> Can anyone help me out with this?

You missed something in the profile. When I close the lid on mine, the wifi
connection keeps on going. All mine does is turn off the backlight on the
display. You set that in System Settings => Power Management.

Hello Prad,

would you be able to sleep and would the laptop be able to continue downloading
if you just let the screen turn off (for example after 1 minute without action of you)
and let the (dark) laptop open?

Regards
Martin

@lwfinger,

I have set the screen to turn off, but I have set the option to “Do nothing” for the laptop lid closed option.

Hi Martin,

Yes I can sleep with the laptop screen turned off. That is what I have been doing. But the problem is that since I have a Dell Studio XPS, when the screen is open it covers 50% of the air vent near the rear of the laptop which makes the laptop heat up. Thats the reason I am trying to find out why my wi-fi is getting disconnected.

Thanks,
Prad

You must be missing something setting this up.
The power management should prevent anything happening when you close the lid (if you set it that way)
I’d be inclined to have my screen switch off in the scenario you describe.

these are the settings I have:

Dim Display : after 6 mins
Screen Energy Saving: switch off after 10 mins
Button Events handling: when laptp lid closed -> Do nothing.

Still aint working.

In my amateurish way of thinking I would try to put two books of the same thickness under the laptop while you do not need if for writing - especially if there are also ventilation slots under the laptop and you could stabilize the laptop but leave these slots in the breach between the books.

And if the closing of the laptop does really end the WLAN and there is no way to change that via software (maybe a hardware switch in the hinge or somewhere that is switched by the closing?) - could you just leave the lid a centimeter open without shutting the WLAN down?

Did you try to reduce the power consumption (and so the produced heat) via the various possible ways like using the kernel flavor default instead of desktop while you are trying to sleep?

But maybe the experts are able to help you find a way to leave your WLAN running while the lid is closed (or at least find the cause of the unwanted shutting down)…

Good luck
Martin

Martin,

I do keep an old defunct WD 1TB hdd under the laptop to keep the laptop to cool down somewhat. But I live in India and this being summer its really hot.

and I do not understand your suggestion about using kernel flavour in default rather than desktop. Could you please explain that to me in layman terms?

Thanks.

Martin is describing using a different kernel. But personally I can’t see that helping. It more likely to confuse you IMO

What version of SUSE is it?
Which desktop? kde or gnome
If a torrent client is in use - Which?

I guessed that shutting down the the lid may have influence on the WLAN even if there is no software issue

But Carl and Larry have far more experience so it is probably better to follow their advice.

Good luck
Martin

On 03/29/2012 01:06 PM, pistazienfresser wrote:
>
> caf4926;2452084 Wrote:
>> Martin is describing using a different kernel. But personally I can’t
>> see that helping. It more likely to confuse you IMO
> I guessed that shutting down the the lid may have influence on the WLAN
> even if there is no software issue
> - like by influencing the reception of the WLAN antenna(s) that is/are
> most probably build in the lid of laptop - compare for example:
> ‘Low Wireless signal strength WLAN 1510 Studio XPS 1340 - Laptop
> General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community’
> (http://tinyurl.com/7a4ghso) with a picture. And so I thought that
> reducing the power consumption (for the time of the download) might be a
> way to give Prad_viking a better chance for a undisturbed sleep.
>
> But Carl and Larry have far more experience so it is probably better to
> follow their advice.

AFAIK, the setup of the display system is correct. If the wireless shuts off
when you close the lid, then it is something built into the hardware of the XPS,
or it is a function of dell-wmi. In either case, there is not much we can do.
You will need to find a workaround that does not involve closing the lid.

Thanks a ton all of you. Really appreciate the help provided by all of you.

Anyway to come around this problem, I have created a new profile under the Power Management which dims the screen brightness all the way down in just 2 minutes so that by the time I hit the sack the screen is off.
(but I have to remember to activate it every time :frowning: )

I just had the same problem. Typically I close the lid on my laptop and have it set to turn off the screen. Then open it up and the wireless reconnects. Tonight at my parents, i did this to go eat dinner, otherwise my new puppy will lay across the keyboard and palmrest cause they’re slightly warm. When I came back from dinner, picked the puppy up off the closed laptop (I guess he just considers it his resting pad) my wireless came up and will not connect. The symbol by the clock is a red “no” circle and the only thing I know how to do in the network connection manager is remove and redo the wireless but that had no effect either. I’m fairly new to linux so any help is appreciated.

Using the info in the sticky it shows correctly with the device and firmware, and the scan (sudo /usr/sbin/iwlist scan) shows:


cell 02 - Address: 00:24:B2:0D:6A:9A
          Channel:6
          Frequency:2.437 GHz  (Channel 6)
          Quality=65/70  Signal level=-45 dBm
          Encryption key:on
          ESSID:"logcabin"
          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
          Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
          Mode:Master
          Extra:tsf=0000018b9520b102
          Extra: Last beacon: 3152ms ago
          IE: Unknown: 00086C6F67636162696E
          IE: Unknown: 010882848B962430486C
          IE: Unknown: 030106
          IE: Unknown: 2A0100
          IE: Unknown: 2F0100
          IE: Unknown: 32040C121860
          IE: Unknown: DD090010180201F0000000
          IE: Unknown: DD180050F2020101800003A4000027A4000042435E0062322F00

that’s the SSID for my parents wireless. I was connected and doing a college course before dinner. I need to reconnect and finish that course by tomorrow night for full credit.

The sticky also said that I could delete the wirelss and reboot to have Suse recognize the wireless again and reconnect. How do I do that?

My stuff:
Dell Inspiron n5010
Centrino Wireless N
OpenSuse 12.1 KDE (updated as of 4/1/12)

I fixed my problem. After reading the stickies and the thread that Oldpcu had on his broadcom wireless, I logged in as root, went to etc/networkmanager/ and deleted a text file there (can’t remember the name and it’s not in my trash) then went to etc/networkmanager/system-connections/ and deleted the text file for my parents SSID. Then opened network manager, scanned for wireless and it found my parent’s wap again. I’m connected once more and off doing horrid homework assignments :slight_smile: