[SOLVED] Lost wlan0 on Toshiba Satellite running FC15

Xotli · 07-24-2011, 06:58 PM

Okay, short version: had wireless working just fine on my Toshiba Satellite using the rtl8187 driver from the staging kernel, rebooted several times with no problems, but on my most recent reboot, wireless is gone: in fact, wlan0 is gone altogether.

Relevant (hopefully) info:

Code:

[root@winterfell ~]# uname -a
Linux winterfell 2.6.38.8-35.fc15.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Jul 6 13:58:54 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@winterfell ~]# lspci | grep -i rtl
02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8187SE Wireless LAN Controller (rev 22)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
[root@winterfell ~]# lsmod | grep -i rtl
rtl8187                31466  0 
mac80211              234498  1 rtl8187
cfg80211              135802  2 rtl8187,mac80211
eeprom_93cx6            1687  1 rtl8187
[root@winterfell ~]# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1E:33:F8:12:ED  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:44 Base address:0x4000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:120224 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:120224 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:9545088 (9.1 MiB)  TX bytes:9545088 (9.1 MiB)

virbr0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr FE:54:00:E9:B2:91  
          inet addr:192.168.122.1  Bcast:192.168.122.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:7470 errors:0 dropped:5 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4498 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:621667 (607.0 KiB)  TX bytes:316854 (309.4 KiB)

vnet0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr FE:54:00:E9:B2:91  
          inet6 addr: fe80::fc54:ff:fee9:b291/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:8881 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:38357 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:500 
          RX bytes:838191 (818.5 KiB)  TX bytes:2090937 (1.9 MiB)

[root@winterfell ~]# ifconfig wlan0 up
wlan0: unknown interface: No such device
[root@winterfell ~]# dmesg | grep -i rtl
[    4.129467] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: RTL8102e at 0xffffc90002224000, 00:1e:33:f8:12:ed, XID 04c00000 IRQ 44
[    5.570431] usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8187
[root@winterfell ~]# dmesg | grep -i wlan0
[root@winterfell ~]# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

virbr0    no wireless extensions.

vnet0     no wireless extensions.

[root@winterfell ~]# ifup wlan0
Error: No suitable device found: no device found for connection 'Home'.
[root@winterfell ~]# cat /proc/net/dev
Inter-|   Receive                                                |  Transmit
 face |bytes    packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|bytes    packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
    lo: 9580672  120672    0    0    0     0          0         0  9580672  120672    0    0    0     0       0          0
  eth0:       0       0    0    0    0     0          0         0        0       0    0    0    0     0       0          0
virbr0:  647168    7697    0    5    0     0          0         0   321065    4540    0    0    0     0       0          0
 vnet0:  873383    9133    0    0    0     0          0         0  2100508   38501    0    0    0     0       0          0

Longer version:

I had a hell of a time getting this thing working in the first place, but lots and lots of searching revealed the answer: the rtl8187 driver works, but Fedora hasn't released it yet. It's still in staging. (Some other distros have, like Mandriva, I believe.) I can't remember how, but I managed to get the staging driver installed and lo: everything worked.

This laptop battery won't hold a charge worth a crap, so it reboots plenty. No problems until this weekend, when it rebooted, and comes up going "wireless? what's that?" Network Manager won't admit to having wireless at all, although I can still see (and edit) the previous wireless connections that were set up. (And I can get the wireless MAC from there.)

So I poked around a little and discovered the rtl8187 module wan't loaded. I modprobe'd it and tried to bring the network up, but no go. I looked around for someplace to add it so it would be loaded at startup, but Fedora has thoughtfully removed /etc/modules.conf for me and replaced it with ... something I can't figure out, apparently. I stuck it in /etc/rc.local as a stopgap and now it is loaded on reboot. Still no wireless though.

Yes, I'm sure my wireless is on: there's no physical switch to turn it off on this model, the Fn key on/off doesn't work in Linux, and the wireless light's on.

Yes, I'm sure the interface is wlan0. If I grep wlan0 in /var/log/messages*, I can see where dhclient was communicating with it just fine ... before the reboot. Since then, there is nothing mentioning wlan0 or the wireless card's MAC address (case insensitively). I was going to say there was nothing mentioning rtl8187 either, but apparently that's wrong ... every time I modprobe the kernel module, it sticks a line in messages about it ... and apparently that line is quite different from what it used to be:

Code:

[root@winterfell ~]# grep -i rtl8187 /var/log/messages*
/var/log/messages-20110703:Jun 27 07:09:56 winterfell kernel: [    4.469469] r8180: MAC controller is a RTL8187SE b/g
/var/log/messages-20110703:Jun 30 21:32:42 winterfell kernel: [    5.020307] r8180: MAC controller is a RTL8187SE b/g
/var/log/messages-20110710:Jul  3 17:06:28 winterfell kernel: [    4.028873] r8180: MAC controller is a RTL8187SE b/g
/var/log/messages-20110710:Jul  9 12:29:56 winterfell kernel: [    4.064076] r8180: MAC controller is a RTL8187SE b/g
/var/log/messages-20110724:Jul 22 10:58:38 winterfell kernel: [  618.131447] usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8187
/var/log/messages-20110724:Jul 22 21:35:35 winterfell kernel: [ 3433.674692] usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8187
/var/log/messages-20110724:Jul 23 16:50:49 winterfell kernel: [69075.504308] usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8187
/var/log/messages-20110724:Jul 23 16:55:11 winterfell kernel: [    5.570431] usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8187

So, apparently Linux thinks it's a USB thing now? (For the record: it's not. The card is internal to the laptop.) I'm glad I did all this anticipatory grep'ing and whatnot trying to figure out what people were going to bitch me out for not putting in my post, 'cause now I'm thinking this is the key to the whole thing. But I don't know what's causing it, or how to fix it. Anyone have any ideas?

TIA.

Xotli · 07-27-2011, 01:48 PM

:bump:

Does anyone have any thoughts at all on this? I'd really appreciate even a wild guess!

Xotli · 08-04-2011, 10:25 PM

:bump: again ...

I'm still trying to figure this one out. Any thoughts from anyone? anyone at all? Bueller? Bueller?

jayfree · 08-05-2011, 11:44 AM

Maybe use ndiswrapper?

gary185 · 08-06-2011, 02:46 AM

I don't want to pretend like i know the answer but i will share some thoughts.
sometimes my wireless interface comes up wlan1 and i have a var/log message that says
udev changed wlan0 to wlan1
but you would have seen that so moving on
try the command
rfkill list
this should say
0: (null): Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
at least thats what mine says
also if that is reporting on something other than 0 that could be the problem
make sure you don't have a kernel module named dell_laptop loaded
if so blacklist it and reboot
can also try the command
rfkill 0 unblock
laptops can do some strange things
you got the little led light on the f12 key yes?
i assume now its the not happy face color.
i think but am not sure that that f12 key activates rf-kill
some laptops do it differently ? FN F2 ?
dmesg might say something like
Radio disabled by HW RF Kill switch
it's odd that your logs are showing the interface getting recognized but then ignored
it might be helpfull to use network manager or wicd as i think they both try to bring up the interface and might spit out some info
i also remember a rf-kill bug in fedora but havn't tried to look it up, don't know how to use the fedora bug tracking system
just as a test try to
push enter on the command
sudo ip link set wlan0 up
while at the same time holding down the F12 button

Xotli · 09-05-2011, 11:49 PM

I finally fixed it!

What I had forgotten was how I managed to get the driver from the staging kernel in there in the first place. What I did was install the kmod-staging package from rpmfusion. But I forgot that that package is kernel-specific, and I didn't realize that at some point a standard update I did updated my kernel too, and I definitely didn't know that kmod-staging wouldn't get updated to match. So all of a sudden my driver didn't match my kernel, which explains why everything was fine until I rebooted.

So literally all I did to fix it was a "yum update kmod-staging" and a reboot and it's all good now. Thanx everyone for the good ideas.