Wifi drops periodically on HP Pavilion laptop with Linux Mint 17.1
 

Hello all, I am new to Linux. I have a new HP laptop and installed Linux Mint. My wifi keeps randomly dropping. Sometimes it will reconnect on it's own, and sometimes I need to reboot in order to reconnect. When it has disconnected, I can't find any wireless networks and the button in network manger for wifi is "off" and can't be moved to "on." I've upgraded the kernel, and I've tried turning ivp6 off. Neither seemed to effect it. Those were ideas others had. My knowledge base is small and growing. Any ideas?

HP Pavilion
4X Intel Core i7-5500U
Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188EE Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca
3.16.0-34 kernel

ServeChilled,

It appears that there is a bug with this wifi adapter from kernel 3.15 onwards.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1108801

Pending resolution of this bug, one alternative is to to buy a cheap USB wifi adapter that is known to work in Linux.

The D-Link Wireless-N 150 Easy USB Adapter does work after a slight modification.

See post #6 on:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...or-4175538763/

Hi ServeChilled...

Welcome to the forum :)

Another good USB adapter that works "out of the box" is the the one here from ThinkPenguin.com. I personally own one of these adapters and have never had a problem with it. ;)

Regards...

Thank you both!:) I think I will get a USB wifi adapter.
Is it appropriate to call this thread solved, or should I leave it open for other ideas to come in, or in case the bug is addressed and then it can be noted here?

Hi...

You can go ahead mark it as "SOLVED," that way folks know that you've decided on a solution. :)

EDIT: On second thought, you might want to wait, there are some more ideas coming in... ;)

Regards...

On some machines the wifi is 1 ,is turned using Fn+ 1 of F-keys that has a wireless sign on it. Are you sure that you haven't hit that combination by mistake?

You may be going to usb adapter, and hope that works better.

Looking at your problem is post #1, 2 options stand out to me

1. The Realtek 8188 has SEVERAL drivers. After 8188 there many letter combinations and each one has it's own driver. Make sure you had the right one.

2. From the symptoms, it sounds like it could be a heat related thing. Are we running cool?

I've decided to try a few more things. I followed the bug report beachboy2 mentioned above: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1108801
This is all quite above my head, but I tried the suggestion on comments 11 & 12. I've copied it below
"
The latest version of the Realtek driver is at http://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new.git. I will be merging that code into the kernel, but it may take a while. The code will build on any kernel version 3.0 or newer.

The usage is:
git clone http://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new.git
cd rtlwifi_new
make
sudo modprobe -rv rtl8188ee
sudo make install
sudo modprobe -v rtl8188ee
"

I think it installed properly, but unfortunately, it did not solve my problem.

In response to business kid, I don't think I am running hot, but I also don't know how to check (yet). The fan isn't running and the case isn't hot.

On any class of a modern PC, the fan should be running at least half the time. Not necessarily fast, but running. Having said that, my fan isn't running atm. But it does, I assure you.

Thank you all for your help so far.

To reiterate, I do have a wifi connection when I first boot up my computer. It usually continues working for awhile, up to a few hours. When it stops working, I cannot see any available networks in the network manager, and I cannot switch the wireless button to on "1" (I can move the button with my mouse, but as soon as I let go of the mouse button, the switch moves back to off "0"). When I reboot my computer I have wireless once again, for a time.

Let me know if that gives any of you more ideas.

Thanks!

Okay. I presume you have wireless tools installed. When the wifi goes, try these commands


These commands assume root (or sudo used), and that your wifi device is called wlan0. If not adjust accordingly.

Thanks again business kid,

As you will see this is still all very new to me, but I am eager to learn. The commands did not seem to require sudo, but I ran them a second time with sudo and got basically the same responses.
So here is what I got:

iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=off
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off

iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0 Failed to read scan data : Network is down

lsmod |rtl
No command 'rtl' found, did you mean:
Command 'rtd' from package 'skycat' (universe)
Command 'rt2' from package 'rttool' (universe)
Command 'rpl' from package 'rpl' (universe)
Command 'rl' from package 'randomize-lines' (universe)
Command 'rtc' from package 'nvram-wakeup' (universe)
Command 'rt' from package 'rt4-clients' (universe)
rtl: command not found

lsusb -v |grep Realtek |less
This gave me something about missing information but then the screen filled with ~'s, one per line, and finally "(END)" and then I didn't know how to do anything. The ~ $ prompt did not return. I had to close the window, "killing" a running process.

Thanks for your efforts with me!

The 'lsmod' thing should have been

That looks for a module beginning 'rtl' to see what kernel modules you were loading. My bad. This one
lists the usb devices having the word 'Realtek' and sends it to less, a pager. Sorry about that. Space = next page; q = quit. I gather there was something there, because you got pages of output. If you are not getting sense out of that, try

which will give less output.

Have you tried

Thank you again business kid and EDDY1!!

I am so grateful for your efforts. As long as you want to keep trying to help, I'll keep trying your suggestions.
So here's what I got...while I had a wireless connection working.

iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"SHAC Network"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 58:6D:8F:7A:4A:6D
Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=58/70 Signal level=-52 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:50 Missed beacon:0

lsmod |grep -i rtl
rtl8188ee 138845 0
rtl_pci 39740 1 rtl8188ee
rtlwifi 121320 2 rtl_pci,rtl8188ee
mac80211 652718 3 rtl_pci,rtlwifi,rtl8188ee
cfg80211 494362 2 mac80211,rtlwifi

lsusb -v |grep Realtek |less
Couldn't open device, some information will be missing
Couldn't open device, some information will be missing
Couldn't open device, some information will be missing
Couldn't open device, some information will be missing
(END)

And finally, EDDY1's suggestion:

michael@C-3PO ~ $ ifup wlan0
ifup: failed to open lockfile /run/network/.ifstate.lock: Permission denied
michael@C-3PO ~ $ sudo ifup wlan0
[sudo] password for michael:
Ignoring unknown interface wlan0=wlan0.