You are not logged in.

#1 2011-03-03 01:15:47

jlacroix
Member
Registered: 2009-08-16
Posts: 576

Trouble with wicd and Switching Connections

I have a Latitude E6410 laptop and I use wicd to manage my wireless connections, it's my favorite utility in this regard and has treated me very well on this machine. With recent kernel releases however, it's not been working so well.

I have it set up to prefer wired connections over wireless, so every time I plug in a cable, it switches to that automatically. When I remove the cable, it switches back to wireless. This used to work, but now it doesn't. If I start my laptop with the ethernet cable plugged in, wicd sees it and uses it. If I then remove it and use the laptop wirelessly, it will switch, but it will never switch back to wired until I reboot. If I connect the cable after having used wireless, it will just try to connect to wireless instead, and sometimes that won't even work. So basically what I'm saying is that having the cable plugged in will make it use the wired connection as intended, but it will never switch back to wired after I connect wirelessly until I reboot.

This is a big problem for me because I use suspend to RAM quite a bit. I'll turn the laptop on at home with the wire plugged in, and put it to sleep and take it to work, where I use wireless all day. I then put it back to sleep when I'm done using it and bring it home and plug the cable in, but then it refuses to connect. This all used to work flawlessly.

Have any of you been through this and know how to make it work again?

Offline

#2 2011-03-07 15:41:23

measure
Member
Registered: 2009-07-17
Posts: 62

Re: Trouble with wicd and Switching Connections

In the past I have had a similar issue with Wicd (but it turned out to really be a hardware/kernel issue which was fixed in subsequent updates of the kernel).  In particular, if I joined a wpa encrypted network, I could not afterwards join a non-wpa encrypted network.  However, I think your problem is quite different.

At any rate, here are some things you could try.

First, do you have the interfaces for your devices blacklisted in rc.conf? You also want to blacklist the network daemon if you're using Wicd.  These steps are outlined in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wicd

See if restarting the Wicd daemon (runing '/etc/rc.d/wicd restart') fixes the issue.  If this allows you to connect then maybe it is a Wicd problem.

What if you stop the Wicd service and simply try to connect though good old ifconfig, iwconfig, etc.  If these don't work then it probably isn't a Wicd issue.

Also, check if removing and reloading (rmmod, modprobe) your wireless/wired drivers have any effect.

Another question, does this happen if you don't suspend?  What I have in mind is the following: What if you were to reboot, connect to a wireless network and then plug in the ethernet cable without suspending.  What happens in this case?  Something going wrong during suspend/resume should not be ruled out.

Finally, check your logs! dmesg | tail, /var/log/wicd/*.

I am by no means an expert, but these are the things I would try first to do a bit detective work.  They are particularly easy to do and might at least help you detect where the problem is.

The bad news is that, such as in my case as I had a new wireless chip (and in general new mobile platform) which was still being debugged a bit at the kernel and driver levels, there was nothing I could do but wait.  At least this is what it seemed like.

Thanks,
Ryan

Offline

#3 2011-03-08 15:34:29

jlacroix
Member
Registered: 2009-08-16
Posts: 576

Re: Trouble with wicd and Switching Connections

Thank you for your response. I will try your tips later this week or as soon as possible. My apartment flooded out and I do not have Internet access at home, nor do I have my network set up until I get settled in to the new place. I will respond back then. Thanks again!

Offline

#4 2011-03-10 02:25:47

jlacroix
Member
Registered: 2009-08-16
Posts: 576

Re: Trouble with wicd and Switching Connections

I did some more testing on this, and based on what I found out, I think we can safely assume it's a Wicd problem, or perhaps Wicd needs to be updated for recent kernels.

If I disable both "always switch to a wired connection when available" in preferences and "automatically connect to this network" in my wireless network settings, everything works, but I have to do everything manually. If I tell it to connect to the wired network, it will disconnect wireless and use wired. Vice versa works as expected. You connect to one, it will disconnect the other and connect properly.

Upon further inspection, It seems as though it's an infinite loop. I tell it to automatically connect to my access point when available, and I tell it to connect to wired when I am plugged in. It doesn't know what to do. It goes back and forth and won't stop. This used to work, I used to be able to unplug my ethernet cable and it would switch to wireless, and then when I plug the ethernet cable back in it would switch back to wired. Now it can't because it loops back and forth.

I think that it's a Wicd issue. I don't think Wicd has been updated in a while (I use the KDE version) but the kernel has. I'm hoping someone else here can test and see if they have the same results.

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB