Wireless card stopped working after 1st package update!

No ideas yet, but I have a suspicion that you are right Nick.

I have a Dell Inspiron B130 laptop. I did quite a bit of testing and successfully loaded 6.0 on to it a couple months ago. It also has a built-in wireless card. It DID connect to my Linksys router. Over the last couple weeks, I have been getting intermittent disconnects. I suspected my router since it had overheated a while back.

However, just a couple days ago I purchased an Apple MacBook. Once I set my router to allow the computers MAC address it connected to the router, and to the Internet with no problems whatsoever. And there have been no intermittent disconnects. So the finger is starting to point back to the laptop...

I am going to try to do a reload of 6.0 onto a spare partition on my laptop and do no updates and then see if I can identify what package(s) might be causing the problem. Unfortunately, I will be unable to test it until I get home

In the meantime, some of the other smart folks around here might just have some solutions

Jon

Somewhere in the back of my brain is a recollection that I did similarly with my daughter'S B130.

In that instance, I had to go through the routine that I did to get the wireless running originally, on the Dell.

Check to see what modules are loading. I'm betting all the originals are in your load list, again.

"You have two labs?"
"Each has its place. At the university, I try to please the Federal Government. Here, I negotiate with God."

Hey EnigmaOne, can you please give me a clue? Which "load list" are you speaking of?

The funny thing is that things were working just fine for quite a while, including after initial upgrade, but that was quite a few weeks ago. Something "interesting" could have happened with one of the packages or modules since then.

On initial install of 6.0, I did nothing but enter my essid, hex password, and frequency, and life was good

I did not (knowingly) install ndiswrapper or any of its ilk.

Jon

This has been a while ago, I did it somewhat distractedly, and didn't take notes (like I told myself that I should be doing).

It was after an apt-get update; apt-get upgrade on either rc1 or rc3.

I do remember installing fwcutter for the bcm43xx series of chipsets.

Post-upgrade, I listed all the ndiswrapper drivers and found that they were all back, so I 'ndiswrapper -e '-ed them all back out and treated it the same way I would have for a new install of a wireless adapter (basically assuming that there was nothing in place to support the chipset).

I did ndiswrapper -i LSBCMNDS.inf with the drivers from the CD copied over to a directory on the Linux-side (from within that directory). Then did ndiswrapper -m

Did the blacklist again...and had to set the freq and other configs from the old MEPIS OS center app.

I really don't recall that anything wireless carried-over through the upgrade, Jon. It seems as though I had to treat it like I would have done a new install of a cardbus adapter.

Mind you, I've probably worked on hundreds of machines since I had to do that, so the details are a little difficult to sort-out from all the work in the interim. (Lots of wireless stuff done.)

"You have two labs?"
"Each has its place. At the university, I try to please the Federal Government. Here, I negotiate with God."

Gang,

Here's what I know so far. I have loaded SM 6.0 from the CD (not 6.0-1 from the DVD). I made only a few "tweaks" to my test login account (more fish flushed down the virtual drain) to make it easier to look around.

then, as root, did "apt-get clean; apt-get update" to update the lists, and "apt-get install apt-listbugs" to get any bug listings to work. Finally, I did another "apt-get clean; apt-get update". This is the result:

# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  amarok amarok-helix amarok-xine
The following packages will be upgraded:
  avm-fritz-firmware-2.6.15-26 bind9-host cpio dnsutils firefox gzip
  imagemagick libbind9-0 libdns21 libgnutls12 libisc11 libisccc0 libisccfg1
  libkrb53 liblwres9 libmagick9 libmusicbrainz4c2a libmysqlclient15off
  libnspr4 libnss3 libpq4 libqt3-headers libqt3-mt libssl0.9.8 libxfont1
  libxine-main1 linux-image-2.6.15-26-386
  linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-26-386 linux-restricted-modules-common
  mozilla-thunderbird mozilla-thunderbird-typeaheadfind mysql-common
  openssh-client openssh-server openssl python2.4 python2.4-dev
  python2.4-minimal python2.4-tk qt3-dev-tools ssh sun-java5-bin
  sun-java5-fonts sun-java5-jre sun-java5-plugin xaralx xinit
  xserver-xorg-core
48 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 117MB of archives.
After unpacking 938kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

So the list above is our "list of usual suspects".

This evening I will try to take the time to
1) configure my network
2) test if it works
3) perform an upgrade
4) test the network again

I may even backup the system first, so that if it does, in fact, blow up, then I'll be able to perform the restore and then to a onesy-twosy update of packages. Perhaps then I can narrow down the list. I'm sure there are some obvious ones up there that will have no bearing on the problem

Care to take a stab (this being Halloween and all) at what might be the likely package(s). Assuming that I can connect to my wireless router initially of course

Jon

I'm looking suspiciously at the bind, dns and linux-restricted packages.

"You have two labs?"
"Each has its place. At the university, I try to please the Federal Government. Here, I negotiate with God."

Thanks E1 for the suggestion. I shall keep it in mind.

Well, my initial results of trying a "base install" and attempt to connect to my wireless network failed. I was busy with other things last night so I couldn't do exhaustive checks, just put the simple info in, and then try to connect.

I have a class this evening so I will not be able to duplicate the experiment. I have a copy of 6.0 that I downloaded, so it's not the "official, pressed CD" from Mepis, but rather one from the repository. I will check with that and see if there are any minor differences (and possible success). Once I have a "baseline" then I can move forward and see what happens and when it breaks

(rats!)

Jon

Hi EnigmaOne

Could you explain what 'the old MEPIS OS center app.' is please.

Cheers,

Nick

Nick, add to
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

blacklist ndiswrapper

(as root)

Presumably you are using the native driver and bcm43xx-fwcutter

This should get you going -- if not, run bcm43xx-fwcutter against your .sys file again

To get it going now (as root)
rmmod bcm43xx
rmmod ndiswrapper
modprobe bcm43xx
mutilities

Set up eth0 in mutilities

Mike

Hit the "Alt + F2" key combination, then enter "mutilities" and click 'Run'.

"You have two labs?"
"Each has its place. At the university, I try to please the Federal Government. Here, I negotiate with God."

That I posted here:
http://www.mepis.org/node/11915

Jon

Hello all,
I've been having a [similar] problem with wireless networking since
allowing an update the other day. Some of the packages that I allowed to
update were the Ubuntu 'avahi' components that were installed by default
(I'm not sure if they are responsible for the problem).
After updating, when booting within range of a public WAP I find that
the system acquires an IP address, but I don't have network access. The system
tells me that the network is not available, also the boot process seem's to be
slow and the cpu is racing at 100%. Oddly enough, the cpu doesn't race when I'm
not within range of a WAP.
I tried to uninstall 'avahi', but it lists KDE components as dependancies,
so I can't uninstall 'avahi' without uninstalling a major part of the WM. I un-
installed the samba components, without any noticeable benefit. I uninstalled
the bluetooth components and the cpu doesn't seem to be racing anymore. I've
done some research and a little terminal work, some of the output follows;

root@3[barogue]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"smoking_man" Nickname:"default"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:40:05:53:4E:C1
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=8/0
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=86/100 Signal level=-43 dBm Noise level=-79 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:13

root@3[barogue]# ifconfig
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:12:F0:43:38:0D
inet addr:xxx.xxx.x.xxx Bcast:xxx.xxx.x.yyy Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:802 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:164147 (160.2 KiB) TX bytes:1680 (1.6 KiB)
Interrupt:177 Memory:dfdfd000-dfdfdfff

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:45 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:45 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:3394 (3.3 KiB) TX bytes:3394 (3.3 KiB)

root@3[barogue]# ping -c 4 216.239.39.99
PING 216.239.39.99 (216.239.39.99): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 216.239.39.99: icmp_seq=0 ttl=238 time=376.4 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.39.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=238 time=147.3 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.39.99: icmp_seq=2 ttl=238 time=135.4 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.39.99: icmp_seq=3 ttl=238 time=143.8 ms

--- 216.239.39.99 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 135.4/200.7/376.4 ms

As near as I can tell, this all seems to be normal enough.
Some interesting failures follow;

root@3[barogue]# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
xxx.xxx.0.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
default xxx.xxx.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth1

root@3[barogue]# iwlist eht1 scanning
eht1 Interface doesn't support scanning.

root@3[barogue]# mutilities
sed: can't read /etc/dhclient.conf: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /etc/dhclient.conf: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /etc/dhclient.conf: No such file or directory
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.3
Copyright 2004-2005 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

Listening on LPF/eth1/00:12:f0:43:38:0d
Sending on LPF/eth1/00:12:f0:43:38:0d
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPOFFER from xxx.xxx.x.x
DHCPREQUEST on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPREQUEST on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from xxx.xxx.x.x
bound to xxx.xxx.x.xxx -- renewal in 34947 seconds.

It looks to me like I can ping, but can't resolve. I have no idea why I
don't have a 'dhclient.conf' file and it looks like there is only one line in my
'resolve.conf' file [nameserver xxx.xxx.x.x] (which looks like localhost).
It's getting extremely frustrating having to jump back an forth between
the live cd (to get internet access) and the installed system (for diagnostics).
I hope that I can still be of some help in solving this problem. After I reinstall
I'm going to mark the 'avahi' packages as 'Lock Version', time will tell.

rsync'ing now, please stand by . . .

I had previously installed SimplyMepis on my Toshiba laptop also and was successful in getting it to work. However, updating broke a file and I was never able to get it to work after that.

There are work arounds and you will find plenty on the forum, I just don't remember where.

I logged into the forum to see if that problem was ever resolved, but appears that it has not, so I will not re-install SimplyMepis on my Toshiba.

Anyway good luck and I will check from time to time to see if there is a permanent resolution to this problem.