wifi connection is spotty

I have been using Oneric Ocelot Linux for about a month now.Mostly it has worked fine except for the wifi.At first I could only get online by first connecting to the internet by connecting on Windows (I have dual booting) then re-booting in Linux. I managed to mostly fix this by using ndis wrapper, but I still have a small problem; when I take a break and put my laptop intp suspend mode I find that I am disconnected and have to re-start Linux to get back on.This is still an improvement since I no longer have to start with Windows to get on line still it would be nice if I didn't have to re-boot every time I need to take a break. Any suggestions?

Welcome to Linux!

You get a lot of credit for getting through your first install and getting the wireless working.

Wireless drivers have always been a bug-a-boo for Linux, particularly on laptops, because many mfgs don't
release their source (ever) or don't release it till long after Microsoft has them. In general,
ndiswrapper is a cluge, if you can find native drivers for your hardware, it will probably work better.
In general, Linux will always work better for you on couple-year-old hardware rather than the bleeding edge stuff.

But you made it work ... good!

Here are some general tricks you should know. I think they will get your connection back without requiring a reboot.

First, you should have wireless-tools installed. Ubuntu has a nice package manager, but I am used to
working from the command line, and it's easier to explain command line stuff in fora like this one.

So for you Ubuntuan's, sudo apt-get install wireless-tools. If you are using Oneiric, you probably already
have it installed.


Next, try iwlist scanning. Here's what I get when I do that, wlan0 is my wifi card:

root@elrond:/home/richard# iwlist scanning
lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:18:39:4E:53:25
                    Channel:3
                    Frequency:2.422 GHz (Channel 3)
                    Quality=58/70  Signal level=-52 dBm  
                    Encryption key:off
                    ESSID:"your_home_network_here"
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s
                    Mode:Master
                    Extra:tsf=00000353940848e8
                    Extra: Last beacon: 8ms ago
                    IE: Unknown: 0007636F6479303037
                    IE: Unknown: 010482848B96
                    IE: Unknown: 030103
                    IE: Unknown: DD06001018020014

If your network is down, you may get this instead:

root@elrond:/home/richard# iwlist scanning
lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0     Interface doesn't support scanning : Network is down

To bring your network back up, try

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

See if that just does not do it! It at least saves a reboot!

That command brings up a "warning". Ignore it if it works for you.

To see if you can avoid ndiswrapper (and so get a connection that does not hang
on suspend), you need to know what your wireless hardware really is.

Install lshw (list hardware)
sudo apt-get install lshw

Run it as root:
sudo lshw

It generates way more than you want to know. To find the wireless stuff, try this:

lshw |grep -i -A6 -B2 wireless

By the way ... I hate typing sudo all the time ... a real problem with Ubuntu. I always enable my root user
and just become root and then do all this stuff without sudo...

Here is my wireless info:

root@elrond:/home/richard# lshw |grep -i -A6 -B2 wireless
                resources: memory:fbd00000-fbdfffff
              *-network
                   description: Wireless interface
                   product: RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
                   vendor: Ralink corp.
                   physical id: 1
                   bus info: pci@0000:04:01.0
                   logical name: wlan0
                   version: 00
--
                   width: 32 bits
                   clock: 33MHz
                   capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
                   configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rt61pci driverversion=3.0.0-15-generic-pae firmware=0.8 ip=10.3.21.13 latency=32 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
                   resources: irq:16 memory:fbdf8000-fbdfffff

If yours is Ralink too, I KNOW there are native linux drivers available. It may take some work to install them. Poke around the net.

My final post ....

If my first advice on how to bring the network back from sleep worked ... I recommend you stick with it. Installing a better driver is something you might
want to do in several months when you are much more familiar with linux. Getting into all that stuff as a noobie can be frustrating (unless messing around
w/ your computer is what you love ...and you have a backup so that you can be online with another computer reading how to fix the first one you just broke).

Happy hacking!

BTW -- The Gnome3 interface on Oneiric is just awful. If this is your first experience w/ Linux you fell into what many experienced users
found really frustrating.

Linus Torvalds himself has dropped Gnome in favor of XFCE4. It is not nearly as pretty as Gnome3/Unity, but it works easily.

If you feel like doing a reinstall at some point, try downloading Xubuntu instead of Ubuntu. I am using Oneiric (right now in fact) but I dumped
the default install for Xubuntu... I am much happier.

pcardout,
Many thanks for your notes on my wifi problem. I haven't yet had a chance to try anything out as there is a lot to look over and I expect it will take a while to go through it all as I am so new at this, still it is much appreciated.Can I assume from your call sign that you're a Trekkie? Me too. I also noticed you used elrond in your message info, which I think must mean you're also a LOTR fan. What is about computer geeks that makes us love this stuff?
At any rate I will definitely give the information you provided a try. I confess if it wasn't for my reading up on Linux I might have given up, but I love the notion of having an OS that I can so completely shape to my needs. I still have a long ways to go, but I have several PDF books I downloaded so that should help(thank the cybergods for the internet).
I actually tried using Xubuntu when I first tried Linux, but once again problems with the wifi forced me to delete it and try Ubuntu instead. Once I get a little more comfortable with Linux I plan to try Xubuntu again,but for now I will stick to Ubuntu though I confess I prefer Gnome To Unity.
Thanks again for the information.
hailing frequencies closed,
JEV23

Hope it works out for you Jev23. You correctly divined that pcard refers to the very same JeanLuc, but the one with the i was taken when I first created my
e-mail address. My desktop is elrond, but my laptop remains galadriel. Keep us posted -- Picard out.