I am on slackware 13.37 using broadcom-sta and wicd from /extra. Every so often, sometimes really often, my wireless resets it's connection.

The only common thread I can see in the system log is at the same time I get 4 messages that "dhcpcd not running"

Any thoughts on this issue?

try 'sudo dhcpcd -d wlan0' from a terminal. It sounds like dhcpcd is silently exiting, the wifi notices eventually, like the cartoon characters that run some distance over the cliff's edge, and flags the issue when it realises it shouldn't be here.

Is it renewing a lease? How long is the lease? 5 secs?

I also had some issues with the broadcom-sta driver+wicd

The solution for me was to switch to NetworkManager (you can get it from SlackBuilds.org)

guess I can try that. I'm looking at the logs and every time I get in the kernel log:
2011-05-24 12:58:04 wlan0 no IPv6 routers present

then in the system log:
2011-05-24 12:58:20 Defiant dhcpcd[11257] dhcpcd not running
2011-05-24 12:58:20 Defiant dhcpcd[11265] dhcpcd not running

all at the same time... just weird. I'd love to know what is really going wrong and fix it.

Definetly get network manager from http://connie.slackware.com/~rworkman/xfce-4.8/ I also experienced a lot of problems with wicd. Now after installing network manager I have no issues anymore and getting connected to multiple networks is a breeze as well.

Have a look at this post as well: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ckages-882194/

This is a broadcom issue.

could you please post an 'lspci -v', 'lspci -knn', and 'lsmod'

What is most likely happening is that the B43 driver is interfering with the broadcom_sta driver.

lspci -v
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43225 802.11b/g/n (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 145e
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
Memory at da100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?>
Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel
Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-00-fe-ff-ff-71-c4-17
Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?>
Kernel driver in use: wl
Kernel modules: wl, brcm80211

lspci -knn
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43225 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4357] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:145e]
Kernel driver in use: wl
Kernel modules: wl, brcm80211

lsmod
Module Size Used by
kvm_intel 46258 0
kvm 290558 1 kvm_intel
snd_seq_dummy 1479 0
snd_seq_oss 30116 0
snd_seq_midi_event 5708 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 52486 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 5473 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 40089 0
snd_mixer_oss 17282 1 snd_pcm_oss
ipv6 275315 26
pcmcia 37397 0
pcmcia_core 12125 1 pcmcia
cpufreq_ondemand 9164 4
acpi_cpufreq 6079 1
freq_table 2435 2 cpufreq_ondemand,acpi_cpufreq
mperf 1195 1 acpi_cpufreq
lp 9781 0
ppdev 6021 0
parport_pc 21214 0
parport 30087 3 lp,ppdev,parport_pc
fuse 66651 1
snd_hda_codec_hdmi 22985 1
snd_hda_codec_idt 56457 1
ir_lirc_codec 4267 0
lib80211_crypt_tkip 8459 0
nvidia 10486926 44
wl 2526774 0
lirc_dev 9763 1 ir_lirc_codec
sdhci_pci 7550 0
ir_sony_decoder 2203 0
ir_jvc_decoder 2329 0
lib80211 4078 2 lib80211_crypt_tkip,wl
joydev 10279 0
ir_rc6_decoder 2809 0
brcm80211 708114 0
uvcvideo 62696 0
videodev 65968 1 uvcvideo
sdhci 17079 1 sdhci_pci
hp_wmi 5741 0
ir_rc5_decoder 2297 0
intel_agp 10824 0
v4l1_compat 15658 2 uvcvideo,videodev
hp_accel 13848 0
mac80211 204017 1 brcm80211
cfg80211 142106 2 brcm80211,mac80211
snd_hda_intel 21915 3
jmb38x_ms 8086 0
memstick 6942 1 jmb38x_ms
processor 25982 1 acpi_cpufreq
rc_rc6_mce 1396 0
ene_ir 15205 0
ir_nec_decoder 2521 0
ir_core 14942 9 ir_lirc_codec,ir_sony_decoder,ir_jvc_decoder,ir_rc6_decoder,ir_rc5_decoder,rc_rc6_mce,ene_ir,ir_nec_ decoder
thermal 8082 0
r8169 37529 0
mii 3906 1 r8169
mmc_core 64800 1 sdhci
sparse_keymap 2984 1 hp_wmi
rfkill 16442 3 hp_wmi,cfg80211
firewire_ohci 27301 0
firewire_core 51107 1 firewire_ohci
i2c_i801 8230 0
v4l2_compat_ioctl32 11199 1 videodev
intel_gtt 14862 1 intel_agp
snd_hda_codec 71748 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel
lis3lv02d 10661 1 hp_accel
snd_hwdep 6254 1 snd_hda_codec
rtc_cmos 9374 0
psmouse 47222 0
video 11949 0
rtc_core 14471 1 rtc_cmos
i2c_core 19769 3 nvidia,videodev,i2c_i801
thermal_sys 13862 3 processor,thermal,video
shpchp 26821 0
agpgart 28874 3 nvidia,intel_agp,intel_gtt
wmi 8349 1 hp_wmi
intel_ips 11442 0
input_polldev 3330 1 lis3lv02d
rtc_lib 1978 1 rtc_core
evdev 9813 20
button 5013 0
serio_raw 4534 0
battery 10535 0
snd_pcm 73762 4 snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
ac 3249 0
output 2020 1 video
sg 26495 0
snd_timer 19671 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 58334 18 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,sn d_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 5681 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 7297 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
hwmon 1473 1 thermal_sys

Here is the problem:

brcm80211


This driver is the new kernel driver that is reverse engineered from Broadcom's own driver. In order for this to work you need the firmware reported at http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211 .

HOWEVER---

Since you are using the broadcom-sta driver, you will need to blacklist the brcm80211 module then reload the wl and broadcom-sta modules. after this, everything should work.

thx. I'm going to try the kernel driver and ditch sta. Looks like my broadcom chip is supported now.

Ok, turns out kernel driver doesn't seem to support my chipset, so I'm back on the sta. I have brcm80211 now blacklisted and still getting dropouts every hour or so.

Any other ideas?

well, thanks to this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...cd/+bug/653878

I went and looked in the
/usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/

folder and found dbus was starting wpa_supplicant... twice... removed them, restarted and have now been up for two hours straight without a drop. Here's hoping.

This is, I hope, my final update on the issue. I have kept posting as there were a half dozen similar posts with no answers in them.

It looks like wicd is the main issue. When I dug into the guts of it, I see it spawning / killing wpa_supplicant and passing it a different config file for each access point. That's right, not ssid, access point. This kill / reconnect is quick, but still kills the network connection meaning irc, network downloads, etc can be interrupted and may not resume.

My solution which has now been up for 3+ hours without a hickup, was to remove wicd completly and update the /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf file adding these lines for my wireless card:
IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"
WLAN_WPADRIVER[4]="wext"

I then added this line to the /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
update_config=1

Then reboot (I know I know) to be sure wicd was all gone for good.

finally, from kde, I ran wpa_gui and setup my ssid's, then saved the config. (you don't have to save the config, but if you do not changes will not stick after reboot)

This got me working and seems to have solved all the dropout issues.

An optional step, as I got tired of putting in root creds to run wpa_gui, is to put this line into your /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:
ctrl_interface_group=netdev

and I also setup my kde to auto run wpa_gui -t (not the kde menu one, as that will always try and run as root). the -t puts it quietly in my task bar and all is well.

Hoping this helps someone else down there.

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