Arch Linux

twhayes

Member

Registered: 2007-10-09

Posts: 22

Weird Wireless Behavior on Acer Laptop

I've got an Acer Laptop running Arch 64 with the Atheros AR2413 Wireless NIC.  I've set it up following the appropriate Arch Wiki pages and it generally works fine.  But, periodically for no obvious reason the wireless stops working.  I can't connect to my LAN, ping the default GW or get to the internet.  I've got another laptop sitting next to this one and its wireless continues to function when this happens so I don't think the problem is my router or my AP.

The laptop is set up to dual boot into Win Vista and when the wireless stops in Arch and I boot in to Vista, it also doesn't work there.  After several hours, the wireless connection returns.  I've set the connection up using the CL and am not running any type of wifi connection manager.

I'm at a loss on where to start troubleshooting this problem.  The only thing that I've noticed is that my iwconfig shows a large number of 'RX invalid nwid.'  I don't really know what that means, but wonder if it means the nic is having problems connecting with the AP for some reason.

Copy of iwconfig is here:

iwconfig                                                           
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wifi0     no wireless extensions.

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"xxxxxx"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency: 2.462 GHz  Access Point: xx:13:10:05:xx:xC
          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm   Sensitivity=1/1
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=56/70  Signal level=-40 dBm  Noise level=-96 dBm 
          Rx invalid nwid:16232  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Here's ifconfig:

ifconfig                                                            
ath0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:xx:D1:AA:xx
          inet addr:192.168.1.1xx   Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::219:7dff:fed1:aac6/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1 
          RX packets:8498 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:9174 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:6497112 (6.1 Mb)  TX bytes:952807 ( 930.4 Kb)

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:133 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:133 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:11538 (11.2 Kb)  TX bytes:11538 ( 11.2 Kb)

wifi0     Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-19-7D-D1-AA-C6-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:126628 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:2794 
          TX packets:11028 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
          RX bytes:13782359 (13.1 Mb)  TX bytes:1225240 (1.1 Mb)
          Interrupt:21

I can provide more info, if anyone needs it.  Would certainly appreciate any advice/suggestions on how to troubleshoot this one.  For now, the laptop is only a backup, but I'm getting ready to go on the road for several months and will need this to be relaible.  Thanks much.  TW

foxbunny

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2006-10-31

Posts: 759

Website

Re: Weird Wireless Behavior on Acer Laptop

I got this yesterday, and tried every configuration scenarion imaginable (to a wireless noob )  on both AP and modem to which AP is hooked, and couldn't get it to work. After a few hours, I was able to connect to AP, but no Internet access... I don't have Win on the same machine, but on another laptop, the wireless works, just like you said.

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Blog

nuxrl

Member

Registered: 2008-04-04

Posts: 7

Re: Weird Wireless Behavior on Acer Laptop

@twhayes,

Sound like you've got a buggy wireless driver in your system. What driver are you using? madwifi? According to the wiki, the madwifi driver supports AR5210, AR5211, AR5212 and AR5213 only.

Maybe try ndiswrapper?

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: Weird Wireless Behavior on Acer Laptop

@twhayes,

Sound like you've got a buggy wireless driver in your system. What driver are you using? madwifi? According to the wiki, the madwifi driver supports AR5210, AR5211, AR5212 and AR5213 only.

Sounds the same to me, filing a bug would be the best way of dealing with this.

Maybe try ndiswrapper?

What good would that do? No wonder bugs stay unfixed for ages.

nuxrl

Member

Registered: 2008-04-04

Posts: 7

Re: Weird Wireless Behavior on Acer Laptop

What good would that do? No wonder bugs stay unfixed for ages.

To get a working wireless connection first.

Last edited by nuxrl (2008-04-10 12:08:47)