For a few days now I’ve been experiencing trouble with my previously trouble-free wireless.
I’m running 11.1, with KDE4.2 (factory I think :\ ). I use Network Manager and ndiswrapper in conjunction with my internal Broadcom BCM4306 Wireless Lan controller.
A few days ago I started experiencing trouble connecting, and then it progressed to my connection dropping out, followed today by a total inability to connect.
I boot into KDE as normal, network manager finds my wireless network and attempts to connect to it ("network manager is connecting) but about 30secs later I get the message “network manager is now disconnected”, but no reason is given.
Is there some sort of a log file I can look at to check what goes wrong?
Bit of a head scratcher this one, as I managed to set up the wirless/ndiswrapper/network manager fine a while back, and now it seems to have tripped over itself.
/sbin/lspci results in a line detailing my network card (Broadcom corporation BCM4306 802.11B/g wireless lan controller (rev 03)
‘sudo /usr/sbin/iwlist scan’ shows that device wlan0 can see my network, and iwconfig shows that wlan0 is not associated with an access point.
Sorry for the vague descriptions, but I can’t find my memory stick to transfer to output of the command line onto my laptop
Anyone got any thoughts, or having a similar problem?
SparkieSteve wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> For a few days now I’ve been experiencing trouble with my previously
> trouble-free wireless.
>
> I’m running 11.1, with KDE4.2 (factory I think :\ ). I use Network
> Manager and ndiswrapper in conjunction with my internal Broadcom BCM4306
> Wireless Lan controller.
>
> A few days ago I started experiencing trouble connecting, and then it
> progressed to my connection dropping out, followed today by a total
> inability to connect.
>
> I boot into KDE as normal, network manager finds my wireless network
> and attempts to connect to it ("network manager is connecting) but about
> 30secs later I get the message “network manager is now disconnected”,
> but no reason is given.
>
> Is there some sort of a log file I can look at to check what goes
> wrong?
The messages from the current boot can be seen with the command ‘dmesg’. The
total system log is at /var/log/messages.
Thanks, it’s handy to know where those logs are located.
Unfortunately, I found nothing to shed light on my problem there. The Network manager file was empty, and the other logs that I checked, which I thought relevant, didn’t show any wireless/network issues or error messages as far as I could tell.
I took my machine to work today, and tried to connect there, just in case it was a specific problem with my network at home, but I get exactly the same problem there
Network manager can see all the networks, and after entering the password I try to connect, but it just gives up after a short while, with no error messages for me to even try to decipher >:(
I was wondering - I seemed to be getting a lot of updates since I moved to Kde4.2, could one of these be causing a problem? Is it possible to ‘roll back’ those updates and see if the problem goes away?
SparkieSteve wrote:
> Network manager can see all the networks, and after entering the
> password I try to connect, but it just gives up after a short while,
> with no error messages for me to even try to decipher >:(
That looks like wrong encryption info.
> I was wondering - I seemed to be getting a lot of updates since I moved
> to Kde4.2, could one of these be causing a problem? Is it possible to
> ‘roll back’ those updates and see if the problem goes away?
I couldn’t find any previous messages in this thread, so I cannot determine what
you had to say about your wireless having stopped working.
It is unlikely that KDE4.2 updates killed wireless. If the KNM applet is
running, you should be OK.
Is your encryption WPA or WEP? If the latter, a password will likely fail. You
need to enter the hex key.
So, I took my machine to work to try on their various wifi networks, but still the same problem persists, so it was deffinatley an issue with my machine, not my network.
Gave up on the issue for a while, and just today booted into XP to see if the wireless was working in there.
Well, I experienced similar problems, so thought it was probably the network card.
Booted back into SuSe, and it’s all working fine again! So, going to XP, then back into SuSe, seems to maybe somehow, have fixed the problem.
I’m now writing this from my desktop machine again, while installing some updates, and the wireless hasn’t dropped out yet, so all seems good.
Anyone got any ideas what the problem could have been?
SparkieSteve wrote:
> Ok,
>
> So, I took my machine to work to try on their various wifi networks,
> but still the same problem persists, so it was deffinatley an issue with
> my machine, not my network.
>
> Gave up on the issue for a while, and just today booted into XP to see
> if the wireless was working in there.
>
> Well, I experienced similar problems, so thought it was probably the
> network card.
>
> Booted back into SuSe, and it’s all working fine again! So, going
> to XP, then back into SuSe, seems to maybe somehow, have fixed the
> problem.
>
> I’m now writing this from my desktop machine again, while installing
> some updates, and the wireless hasn’t dropped out yet, so all seems
> good.
>
> Anyone got any ideas what the problem could have been?
With the BIOS in some machines, Windows will turn the wifi off when it
hibernates, and it is not turned on by Linux. This has been discussed in the forums.
It’s gone again, and now I’m getting similar behaviour in XP! So, I’m starting to think maybe I need a new network card.
In XP, I can get a connection again by selecing ‘repair’ from the right click menu on the system tray icon. Is there a similar feature in Suse/KDE/NetworkManager?
SparkieSteve wrote:
>>
>
> Grrr!
>
> It’s gone again, and now I’m getting similar behaviour in XP! So, I’m
> starting to think maybe I need a new network card.
>
> In XP, I can get a connection again by selecing ‘repair’ from the right
> click menu on the system tray icon. Is there a similar feature in
> Suse/KDE/NetworkManager?
Open the KNM applet and click on the connection. It will do what Windoze calls
repair - which is just a reconnect in case you are wondering.
I’m observing something which looks similar on a Dell laptop with an IWL4965. I’m also running 11.1 with KDE 4.2 Factory.
Firstly I’m not convinced that the KDE 4.2 network manager widget is obtaining the WPA key from the KDE wallet as it doesn’t seem to prompt for the wallet password when attempting to connect but does when later when editing the connection information. Looking at /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log shows authentication errors when registering with the access point. However, it’s always possible this might be user error in entering the WPA key.
Switching to the existing configuration of KDE 3.5 knetworkmanager or the Gnome nm-applet gives slightly different behaviour:
Examining /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log shows that the system is authenticating with the AP but inspection of /var/log/NetworkManager shows that DHCP is timing out and that wlan0 is then disabled.
If, using knetworkmanager, I reconfigure the connection to use a fixed IP address and connect to the AP then initially I am not able to talk to anything else, but about after about 75 seconds (I leave a ping running against a known address) full connectivity is established.
This delay is puzzling - everything worked fine on this machine with 11.0 and another identical laptop with 11.1 has no wireless network issues.
Anyway, for the problem in this thread: if you haven’t already done so, check the wpa_supplicant.log and NetworkManager log for any details. If you’re also getting a DHCP timeout then try a fixed IP address to see if you get any connectivity.
So, going to XP, then back into SuSe, seems to maybe somehow, have fixed the problem.