Wicd has stopped finding wireless access point.
 

Hello LQ,

Been running Slackware a year or more and last week Wicd suddenly started dropping the wireless connection and is then unable to find wireless access point thereafter. After a cold boot it seem to find the access point and then runs for a while and then drops.

Last night tried to connect upstairs and it wouldn't connect but this morning on waking it had connected itself and ran for a good while but then on coming downstairs it failed to connect. The router is downstairs.

On a connect failure I have tried restarting Wicd daemon but that has no effect. A cold boot seems to be the only way to get it up and running and this is only good for a while and there doesn't seem to be a pattern except that it drops the connection.

Following is iwconfig with wireless working and connected..


Following is iwconfig with no access point scanned and when Wicd seems to be in err.


Following is a snippet form /var/log/messages that I think is relevent to the network issue.


The following is an excerpt from a few hours of the /var/log/wicd/wicd.log

I have noticed in the middle of the following log that it is trying to use a network address that does not seem to add up. Address ranges it should be trying to lease are 192.168.15.* but I will insert a section of the log following I think may be relevent.

Following is the larger section of the wicd.log

So I hope this is enough nfo for someone to help me out here and try figure out what is the issue. I have considerd that it may be a hardware issue or perhaps like was suggested in another thread that the router may need a firmware update or perhaps the crack in the magnetosphere last week may have damaged some hardware. I am unsure and will try to keep an open mind for the now until I hear more.

I'm no network whiz, but this line from your third snippet of code makes me think signal loss instead of wicd/software problem:

Feb 23 14:20:08 dazedproductions dhcpcd\[2299\]: wlan0: carrier lost

Thanks for your response liberal. Yes noticed that too. I am thinking also there is a problem with the router. Reserving judgement for a a bit though.

i find it strange wicd is requesting a lease from 169.254.79.86 when I would have expected it to try lease an address from a 192.168.15.* quad.

So is the router broadcasting an incorrect address some times. and if so why is eth0 not affected.

or

is there a file getting rewritten which wicd reads from to request an address from a paticular quad.

any way

appreciate your response

daz

A bit of knowledge building (won't help you with your wireless issue but it will clear up things conceptually anyway):

Any address which starts with "169.254." means that the DHCP client was unable to talk to a DHCP server. The result being that the DHCP client randomly assigns the network interface a so-called "link-local" address in the range 169.254.0.0/255.255.0.0. Since all DHCP clients should know about and apply this link-local fall-back in the absense of a DHCP server, the result will be that all your computers in the local LAN will still be able to talk to each other since they all get assigned a random IP address in the same IP network range.

Eric

Wow Alien Bob,
Nice to meet you, been to your site many times.
Thank you for that bit of information. I like to think I know a little bit about networking but never knew that. thank you for the food for thought. Hmmmmm what gives then...

daz

A question that comes to mind -- Do you have anything hardwired to the router that uses DHCP. If not, you might try plugging in directly for a while to see what happens. The lack of a carrier signal still makes me think of a weak or intermittent signal. The obvious is try to move closer, but if the hardware is failing it probably won't help.

Hi again liberal.

I am unsure what you mean by hardwired to the router using DHCP. May I assume you mean connected via cable. At the moment there is nothing else connected to router only this laptop and that is usually the case except for one other computer which is a wired connection also using slackware. This computer is very seldom on.The laptop is wired in and there is no proplem with that connection at all. The wireless has been up and running for a couple of hours now with no problems. But that may not be for long. As I said earlier there is no patter except for the fact the it will drop the connection. This I am sure of as it has been happening for a week now. Eveything appears to work? except for the dropped connections which have no pattern and an inability to scan for the wireless access point without a cold boot.

again I appreciate your participitation


edit: Wireless dropped while posting this response.
daz

Both wired and wireless connections are granted ip addresses by the router using DHCP. DHCP problems can be eliminated from the equation if, for the last week, wired connections have not experienced the same problem. This is a difficult proposition to test if the other computer has not been on. Another way would be to use static ip's, but that would require you to access the router configuration. Most people shouldn't toy with their router, particularly if it comes from the cable company.

Hi again liberal,

I do realize the concept of DHCP and that wireless and wired connections are granted access via the DHCP server. As I have said a few time now there is no problem with the wired connection. It has been flawless which leads me to believe there is no problem with the DHCP server. Using static IP's would achieve nothing as I would not be using the DHCP server anymore for my addressing so I fail to see what I would learn from doing that.

I will take on board what you say about using a static address but If like you pointed out earlier concerning carrier signal loss is the problem. I am unsure what static IP will do to alleviate this issue.

Again you'r input much appreciated

daz

Wavemon (or some similar program) might help you troubleshoot the signal issue. It is available from SlackBuilds in the 13.1 repository. If you want to see what it does, here is a brief explanation: http://www.techspikes.com/2009/12/wavemon-wifi-signal-monitor/ and here is their website: http://eden-feed.erg.abdn.ac.uk/wavemon/http://eden-feed.erg.abdn.ac.uk/wavemon/.

If you can monitor the signal while you work, it may help. I don't have much more to offer, but my gut still tells me hardware problem.

Nice one liberal,
You have been helping realize or not. I will give that monitor a go a see what it is trying to tell me. My gut also says hardware in some form or another.

again really appreciate your input
I will set it up tomorrow and let you know the result if any.
gone a little late here for troubleshooting so good night.

daz

Right I have been running wavemon for few hours now. The wireless link has stayed up for the entire time. The link quality is reading between 51-61/70. I would guess that seems ok to me.

The signal quality is about -60 dBm. This I would class as normal for this wireless adapter. It never seemed to be that much of an issue before.

The bitrate is the one that seems a bit extreme. One minute it is reading 54Mbits/s and all of a sudden it will drop to 1Mbit/s and then back up to 54. I am fairley sure It should be reading a steady 54Mbits/s. It still doesn't tell me much about whether the problem is router or card.

Thank you again for your help and links.

If anyone has any information on software for troubleshooting routers or wireless cards I would be very grateful.

daz

Which card do you have? And which kernel version are you running? There were a bunch of issues with ath9k drivers in the latest kernel, idk if that might be your problem or not, but if you have an Atheros card, you might want to look into it.

whats the output of and

Nice one trademark,
Thanks for joining in.

I was over on an ubuntu site earlier and some dude managed to sort a similar type of problem out by boosting the antenna signal on his router. I am not ready to go there just yet since the problem only started happening out of the blue I would like to understand the issue better. I am running a second hand achter which I am really impressed with. Ex army laptop. Impressive in design. The signal level was never the best but it was very functunionl even upstairs away form the router.

I am going to upload a screencapture of wavemon as it runs in a little bit.
Never know some one may be able to make some sense of it.

Thank you again trademark for joining in

daz

Hi again,

I have that screencapture of wavemon up now If someone would like to take a look and explain what I am seeing.

If you get as far as the 2 minute mark you can see where the bitrate drops to 1Mbits/s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLoTR...1&feature=plcp

Thanks in advance

daz