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Wireless - RTL 8187b + wicd + wpa_supplicant - naughty behaviour
[SOLVED]
So I got as a present a Laptop, the giver was aware that I donīt use M$ anymore for some time now (about 5years) and she (my wife) did this as a surprise in the coming of our new baby girl (she took pity at my old Laptop - witch Toshiba should buy me up for historical purposes). This means she baught me a Linux running box (!!). But it also means that I did not choose the hardware, and have no heart to tell her it is CRAP! It all started when I booted the thing and it started a Mandriva 2008.0 (2008? - you got to be kidding me) It took me about 10 minutes to download the latest Debian Testing no.1 CD and start what would be my first 64bit OS :))) After installing the screen resolution sucked (800x600 in 16bit) this is when I started to look at the box with that "donīt you go naughty on me boy" look I learned from my mother ;-) I quickly switched to xorg.conf edited some Modeline and was up and running a 1280x768 24bit X (about 2 hours work - I tried first to install my SiS driver from source, but it wouldnīt compile on Testing -- seems the missing file is Sid only) Ok now I installed all my necessary packages and took out the net cable - I wanted to go upstairs and see my daughter, but was downloading a movie. Suddenly the wireless stops. Tried to reconnect and it gave me a "wrong password" error in ' wicd '. Weird, must be a coincidence and started checking my router ... everything fine there all other wireless gadgets running smoothly (including old dinosaur laptop - Debian Testing updated in a i386 kernel). Then I discovered that wireless WAS working, but in a very peculiar way: when I am 2-3 meters form router it connects at normal speed and very easily, but farther form this distance it just doesnīt seem able to CONNECT, but it still correcly scans and finds the wireless networks. Sometimes I can "take the connection with me" upstairs, but itīs not reproductable enough to make it a pseudo-fix. I thought it maybe the card, but then would it connect when I am standing besides the router? Thought it to be wpa-supplicant but the same holds true as with the card ... my guess it has something to do with POWER SAVING. It does not work with eigther Ubuntu 9.10 or Mandriva 2010.0 # uname -a Linux casa 2.6.32-3-amd64 #1 SMP Sun Jan 10 22:40:40 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux When it works: # dmesg | grep -e rtl -e wlan -e DEV -eth --- (if you want I can post the hole thing ... just ask ... no point supressing MAC for local wireless) Code:
[ 0.000000] AMD AuthenticAMD Code:
lo no wireless extensions.After I lose my connection : # dmesg | grep -e rtl -e wlan -e DEV -eth Code:
[ 986.760041] wlan0: deauthenticating from 00:21:04:1a:21:f6 by local choice (reason=3) Code:
lo no wireless extensions.1) eth0 keeps auto-negotiating forever, as long as the box is powered it still tries to negotiate even though no cable is connected. 2) see that when the deect occurs the probe was SUCCESSFULL the authentication that failed Anybody got a clue? Thanks |
router's log
Hello,
Perhaps it will be helpful to verify your router's logfile. I suppose that sometimes connections are being lost due to a weak signal, especially for protected networks. This is my own observation. |
But what if it is a low signal ... in MS-Win 7 it works great ... if it was a problem with my wifi card it would be bad in MS-Win too right? Besides I use a Siemens SE361 wireless router, the only log I found was itīs request for DHCP FROM my DSL modem, no DHCP requests TO my wireless clients.
Found out that the wicd log has some info too ... here it is: OBS: it tells me to use other dhcp client, I already tried with no difference (when I use dhclient it tells me to use dhcpcd and vice-versa) Code:
2010/04/02 15:46:14 :: wicd initializing...Thanks |
Now I am using on my desktop wicd+wpa_supplicant with Slackware and default
Network Manager for Ubuntu. On my laptop I use wicd+wpa_supplicant for both Slackware and Ubuntu. Perhaps it wiil give you some help if you try to run wpa_supplicant manually from console or a terminal emulator (perhaps as a root user or with 'sudo'). I found this in the manual ($man wpa_supplicant) Quote:
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In my distro there is no such file /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf ... there are 3 files in the /etc/wpa_supplicant/ directory and they are all bash sripts .
Rogerio |
Quote:
Quote:
and with your wpa-password (psk="...") and save in /etc as wpa_supplicant.conf. You may run wpa_supplicant with this file as a config file. It should work. |
- With default Xorg-drivers native LCD resolution of 1280*800 is not possible, 1280*768 is likely not your native resolution and therefore the screen may be a bit blurry.
- Best distributions for SiS chipset still is Mandriva 2009.1 or 2010.0, which support SiS graphics out of the box. The Mandriva driver supports 2D acceleration but no 3D, Xorg driver none of both. - Good ressources for SiS graphics are http://ncc-1701a.homelinux.net/~linux-sis/ and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=958967&page=37 - 8187B sucks on Linux if the router is more than 5 meters away. Some bugs are already filed on this issue which affects all distributions: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/293946 |
Ok here is the update:
SiS vídeo works perfectly with the tutorial in Ubuntu foruns: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=958967&page=38 *** It freaked me out to do the blind console part, but it worked perfectly - THANKS Mhgsys !!! Now the wireless rtl8187b adapter seems for now a dead end, the linux-wireless people canīt seem to get interested in this bug, seems it is a hit-miss situation as one of the devs has the chip working pleasently in his box, the latest post was something in the way of "well mine works so I canīt write code to fix something that works". In Aug/2010 another kernel dev has aparently seen the problem and is as I write this trying some test on the driver. Oh well, we will wait and see. In the Ubuntu bug tracker the problem is still open and persists on many peopleīs machines. Rogerio |
Hello Rogerio,
I've participated in that thread as well, but the rtl8187 driver development seems to be hopeless... Since that card really made me mad I'll order another card this week; a wireless N card, but I will still stay with a G-router for the next time - I'll be happy with 10mbit/s @ 10 meters instead of the poor rtl8187's 1mbit/s) Larry F. "does not understand the poor performance." "At 2 m from the AP his throughput is 13 Mb/s. At 10 m the transmit speed is 3.5 Mb/s." I don't understand why he doesn't understand the poor performance. He gets poor performance on his own machine, too. He's talking about MegaBIT/s and not MegaBYTES. Windows gets 2.5 MByte/s (~20 MegaBIT/s) at 2 meters and 1.25 Mbyte/s (~10 MegaBIT/s) at 10 meters, what is up to three times (!) faster than Larry F's throughput (and up to 10 times faster than my card, which somehow must be even worse than Larry's...) |
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@ Mark_ger
We are doing some tests on a patch Cascardo (from linux-wireless list) has come up with ... as soon as I recompile my kernel will give you a word ;) Fingers crossed :) Rogerio |
Would be really great if Cascardo can improve the rtl8187 module.
I appreciate every effort to get that card working better since the code maintainers are not interested in any further development, BUT that "do not do per packet TX AGC"-patch made things not really better (I compiled a patched module few days ago). I emailed Realtek support for the latest driver, not sure if they send me anything. The realtek driver ver. 1056 compiled on 2.6.33, but the module crashes when its loaded. |
SUCCESS!!! (preliminary)
@ Mark
Preliminary testing with Cascardo's is a HUGE SUCCESS, I made a conect at 30meters and stayed connected for about 1hour, speed similar to that in Win7, even a Suspend/Resume worked fine. As soon as Cascardo lets me Iīll post the patch for testers . Rogerio PS: It went so well I already offered him a pizza if he comes my way ;) |
Interesting. No progress for a long time and currently they are all working on the 8187b driver...?
A Mandriva developer posted a bunch of patches for the rtl8187 driver on linux wireless: https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/296452/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/296372/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/296382/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/296402/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/296412/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/296442/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/296432/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/296422/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/296392/ Disussion here (comments from Nov 1): http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linu...t_lines=100000 |
Patch from Cascardo of Linux-wireless
Yes Mark ... will try those patches in the weekend
For now Cascardo has given the ok to post his patch ... Here it goes: save it as 8187.patch and apply it to the 8187_dev.c in the rtl818x/ of source and compile Code:
--- a/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187_dev.c |
Hey, thank you!
But when I patch the driver, I get some strange output Code:
$ patch -p0 rtl8187_dev.c rtl8187b.patch |
No ... that is error
But doesn't happen here, try this again: Code:
--- a/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187_dev.c |
Rogerio: thanks for the help, but for some reason I could not apply that patch properly.
However, Mandriva 2010.1 meanwhile got an update to kernel 2.6.36 Quote:
I installed 2.6.36, but unfortunately I can recognize only very small performance improvement :-( Do you know if Cascardo's patch will be included in upcoming kernel versions? Mark |
Solved
From early DECEMBER/2010 the compat-wireless bundle from linux-wireless has the fix, so just follow the instructions on compatīs web page to get the wireless working (even on Debian Testing :)
Rogerio |
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