So I installed a new wifi card, all seemed well, picked up the network great and was connected and surfing. Was going through WICD to change some old settings, and WICD became completely unresponsive, I couldn't do anything, it finally forced the program to close, then X stopped responding and my screen went blank. I let it sit there for a while, and nothing happened, so I hit my power button, my HD activity light started to flash, and for a split second my screen came back, console screen, that was filled with errors that read "MAGIC COOKIE" I restarted, I can login as root, or as any other user, but when I try to start X, all I get is the blank screen again.

Just curious where I should start my journey at resolving this.

Thanks for any help!

--Paul--

I would erase all recently updated wicd configuration files in ~/.wicd, /etc/wicd and /var/lib/wicd/configurations, cross my fingers and startx (I suppose that you are in runlevel 3).

But first you may look for useful information in /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog and /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

Last resort, erase all files in aforementioned wicd directories then reinstall wicd.

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In addition to Didiers advice, you might consider deleting any stale files in the tmp directory eg /tmp/ksocket-<yourusername> and .X11-unix
The reason I say this is that X has failed and will not restart. The Magic cookie errors you saw could be X authentication failures, and a clearout from/tmp may help. I cant understand the connection with wicd, but you have nothing to lose by trying this.

tobyl

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Thanks for the info guys. I was finally able to get back into X, and just out of curiosity I did lspci -k and my wifi card was there, and the driver was in use. I can open wicd, and it lists every wireless network around here, so I try and connect to mine (unsecured by the way) and it locks up tighter than a drum with the message at the bottom of wicd "flushing routing table"

Lspci -k says:
Network controller: ralink corp rt2800 802.11n pci
Subsystem: linksys device 0067
Kernel driver in use: rt2800pci
Kernel modules: rt2860sta, rt2800pci



I am running an ubuntu live CD right now, just for the sake of trying to figure out where to go next. I am using wicd 1.7, slackware 13.37, and a linksys wmp600n wifi card.

If this were a wifi driver issue - would it even go as far as being able to list the in-range networks?

Thanks again!

--Paul--

Without an error log it is not possible to see what it is exactly, but the Wicd GUI is a simple Gtk program, it shouldn't normally be able to crash X. I would suspect a driver problem (and yes, it may be triggered only by certain function calls in the driver software, so it may successfully list the networks but hang when trying to connect). On the other hand a driver failure would be expected to segfault either the driver module and dependent software, or the kernel itself. I wouldn't expect an X freeze. Did you check the logs under /var/log?

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Thanks for the help guys, I looked at wicd error logs, but nothing that pointed to a direct problem. I removed, and re-installed wicd and now I don't have the crashing problems. Now the problem is this: I can connect to my network, after a random short amount of time, it will disconnect, and then I cannot even locate a wireless network. A reboot will fix this, but only temporarily as it happens again. I shall post the output of my wicd log as soon as I get back home.

Thanks, and happy holidays to all!

So you have two kernel modules loaded but one driver in use - at least that's what it looks like to me, although not sure why this would happen.
I would try blacklisting the rt2800pci module to see if you have better luck with the rt2860sta module (which should load instead) To blacklist a module, simply list in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.

Failing that, I would upgrade the kernel if you are comfotable doing it. The driver for my wireless chipset took a giant leap forward with kernel 3.2.0-rc6, i.e it works perfectly now (not related to your hardware, but just wanted to highlight that drivers are improving all the time).

tobyl

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks to everyone, my wireless connection issues are working great! I ended up installing kernel 3.1.6 and all is great!

Thanks again!