Disappearing wireless network on karmic

Johnnie.it · 11-07-2009, 07:25 AM

Hi everyone,

The network manager is driving me crazy with his behavior.
I'm using ubuntu since a few months, and occasionally in the past, and it's always been the same. I've searched lots of forum for a solution, but never had any luck so far.

Other than that, let me say that although I'm familiar with linux, I'm no expert user, and I'm not really at ease with the terminal, even though I use it quite often (heh...it's linux

).

Anyway the problem is as simple as that: after a few hours the system is running, the wifi disconnects; the applet displays that thinghy circling through the two dots as it does on startup, when connecting, then asks for password (network password, not the one for the keyring, and I just can't understand why); I type it, and the applet keeps circling over and over for several minutes, then it asks for the pwd again.
I've tried just disconnect it, wait for a minute and have it reconnect again, to no avail.
The only thing that works is a reboot. The router is fine.

Additionally, this problem seems to be very erratic: sometimes it happens just five minutes after I've powered up my laptop, others after several hours; sometimes I'm using amule/torrent/other p2p software as miro, sometimes not.

If there's any other info I can provide please ask.

Thanks

repo · 11-07-2009, 07:35 AM

Try to install wicd, and see if the problem persist.

nimnull22 · 11-07-2009, 09:49 AM

You forgot to tell us what linux do you use?

Any way, when it will happen again take a look on the file /var/lod/messages and /var/log/warn.

Johnnie.it · 11-07-2009, 11:20 AM

Hi nimnull,
I actually said twice what linux I'm using: karmic first, and then ubuntu.
I'll check the logs if anything happens again, thanks for the advice.

I installed wicd, as suggested, and I had a tough time to have it running. The wiki and faq on the site weren't really useful.
Anyway, after tinkering around a bit with the configuration I was able to have it work.

I'm thanking you both in advance, should everything work fine from now on.
Only time will tell

If not, I'll be back here crying

Johnnie.it · 11-08-2009, 09:34 AM

Hi again,

sadly, wicd did not work.
it happened 2 times tonight, here's what I found in /var/log/messages:

Code:

Nov  8 03:44:44 localhost kernel: [ 1750.948089] hda-intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode: last cmd=0x201f1500

Nov  8 04:43:00 localhost kernel: [ 3248.064168] hda-intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode: last cmd=0x201f1500

Full log on http://pastebin.com/m4fceb1bf
Also, I couldn't find any /var/log/warn

In /var/log/messages.1 I found this interesting:

Code:

Nov  6 04:49:01 johnnie-xps kernel: [ 8577.054187] hda-intel: IRQ timing workaround is activated for card #0. Suggest a bigger bdl_pos_adj.

It actually appears twice.

Now, the problem is that hda_intel refers to the sound card, which for sure wasn't being used, at least at 4:30, because I was definitely sound asleep -_-

Anyone got any clue about what's going on?

nimnull22 · 11-08-2009, 10:44 AM

Please do in user console "dmesg"

Thanks

Johnnie.it · 11-08-2009, 04:56 PM

dmesg reports an endless sequence of:
[36586.725813] l2cap_recv_acldata: Unexpected continuation frame (len 0)
and this is the last line:
[38489.492074] hda-intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode: last cmd=0x201f1500

And frankly I don't quite get the meaning of this all

nimnull22 · 11-08-2009, 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnnie.it

dmesg reports an endless sequence of:
[36586.725813] l2cap_recv_acldata: Unexpected continuation frame (len 0)
and this is the last line:
[38489.492074] hda-intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode: last cmd=0x201f1500

And frankly I don't quite get the meaning of this all

Ok, "dmesg | tail"

And please "/var/log/daemon.log" as well

thanks.

Johnnie.it · 11-10-2009, 09:09 AM

Ok, sorry to have kept you waiting, I just wanted for it to happen again so to post any last-minute messages (even though those log files are getting HUGE!!!)

anyway, here they are: /var/log/message, /var/log/daemon.log and dmesg

thanks again for your support

nimnull22 · 11-10-2009, 03:18 PM

Thanks. I have an idea.
Please do "whereis dhclient". You will see output with locations of some files. Among them should be location of the dhclient.conf file. Locate it and paste its contents to pastebin.com, please.

Johnnie.it · 11-10-2009, 04:23 PM

Code:

johnnie@johnnie-xps:~$ whereis dhclient
dhclient: /sbin/dhclient /usr/share/man/man8/dhclient.8.gz
johnnie@johnnie-xps:~$ cd /sbin
johnnie@johnnie-xps:/sbin$ ls dh* -l
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      9 2009-11-01 00:55 dhclient -> dhclient3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 415516 2009-10-09 00:52 dhclient3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   8714 2009-10-09 00:52 dhclient-script

That's all I have.

Are you suggesting the DHCP client to be responsible for that? I have configured my router to always assign 192.168.1.99 to the laptop's mac address.

I have now configured wicd to use a static IP, just in case...let's see...

repo · 11-10-2009, 04:27 PM

you can set wicd to reconnect at connection loss

nimnull22 · 11-10-2009, 05:03 PM

I don't understand anything, all distributions have dhclient.conf file, where the configuration of dhclient is.
But developers from "karmic" think that it is not necessary.

I want to stop dhclient renew your IP addresses, because it is useless, I wanted to add to the dhclient.conf something like "renew 2 2010/12/2 23:00:00". I expect in this case dhclient will renew IP and other things not very soon.

You can try to create it by your self in /etc and write that expression in it. Then disconnect and connect again.

Or you can setup static IP, so dhclient never even start.