wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

punter · 2008-03-26 21:20:38

hey guys,
i upgraded my system 2 days ago and my wireless driver has gone mad - it says "the killer switch is on", "network is down", etc.

the upgrade involved an update to the kernel headers, new versions of gcc, glibc, binutils, and xorg-server.
i've been using iwlwifi-3945-ucode all along, so i don't understand why this has happened.
the driver seems to load fine - its listed in lsmod and dmesg, but it thinks my wireless switch is off (which is not).

i re-installed iwlwifi-3945-ucode and kernel26, but it didn't help.
any ideas?

thanks,
shane

.:B:. · 2008-03-26 21:22:27

Did you read the front page? If not, didn't you notice there is no advanced network configuration tool
anymore?

Ergo: no more wireless?

tigrmesh · 2008-03-27 03:49:41

Of course there's wireless. It's just been changed a bit. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_Profiles

krigun · 2008-03-27 10:02:55

I have the 3945 chip myself, and after 2.6.24 its not been very stable.

I have to run the following code twice, to bring up wlan0:

killall dhcpcd
iwconfig wlan0 essid ... key ...
dhcpcd wlan0

It always fails the first time, but most of the time it works the second time. And sometimes, it just does not work at all. This did not happen with the 2.6.23 kernel running the ipw3945 daemon.

.:B:. · 2008-03-27 10:14:21

tigrmesh wrote:

Of course there's wireless. It's just been changed a bit. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_Profiles

You know what I mean.

ibendiben · 2008-03-27 14:12:36

krigun wrote:

I have the 3945 chip myself, and after 2.6.24 its not been very stable.
I have to run the following code twice, to bring up wlan0:
killall dhcpcd
iwconfig wlan0 essid ... key ...
dhcpcd wlan0
It always fails the first time, but most of the time it works the second time. And sometimes, it just does not work at all. This did not happen with the 2.6.23 kernel running the ipw3945 daemon.

And this is while you're not running any network script/deamon/program ?? What are the errors it gives you?
I removed all rc.conf entries I had for my wireless device (also things like wlan0=dhcp, or INTERFACES=(...) and made my own network deamon with just those three commands:

#!/bin/bash
#
#

ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 essid ... key ...
dhcpcd wlan0

This works all the time, while normal network and netcfg2 scripts gave me troubles...
Of course your can only use this if you're connecting to one and the same network all the time...

lloeki · 2008-03-27 14:41:58

I have the 3945 chip myself, and after 2.6.24 its not been very stable.

I believe the standalone iwlwifi package we had back when we were at 2.6.23 was more bleeding edge that what got merged into the 2.6.24 kernel.

punter · 2008-03-27 18:42:10

well, thanks a lot for clearing that out - i'm just an end-user, i don't check the arch homepage regularly.

so, with this upgrade, what should I do with /etc/rc.d/network and /etc/network-profiles ??
these seem to be useless now, am i correct?
is there any package that i should remove? (e.g. pacman -Rs network)

cheers,
-S

tigrmesh · 2008-03-27 19:03:57

punter wrote:

well, thanks a lot for clearing that out - i'm just an end-user, i don't check the arch homepage regularly.
so, with this upgrade, what should I do with /etc/rc.d/network and /etc/network-profiles ??
these seem to be useless now, am i correct?
is there any package that i should remove? (e.g. pacman -Rs network)
cheers,
-S

/etc/rc.d/network is owned by initscripts, so I wouldn't get rid of that (pacman -Qo /etc/rc.d/network). Check for who owns /etc/network-profiles.

Part of being an arch user is checking the homepage and reading the output from pacman -Su, or looking at /var/log/pacman.log. Otherwise, your system will break again.

.:B:. · 2008-03-27 19:30:06

lloeki wrote:

I have the 3945 chip myself, and after 2.6.24 its not been very stable.
I believe the standalone iwlwifi package we had back when we were at 2.6.23 was more bleeding edge that what got merged into the 2.6.24 kernel.

Indeed. It's also the case for rt2x00, sadly. Lots of people wonder why...

krigun · 2008-03-27 22:51:32

And this is while you're not running any network script/deamon/program ?? What are the errors it gives you?

Well, the first time I get the following message, second time all is well. Ive always set the network this way on all kernel versions and wlan cards, and there is nothing wrong with the wireless router.

[root@archlinux gunnar]# iwconfig wlan0 essid <essid> key <passwd>
[root@archlinux gunnar]# dhcpcd wlan0
err, wlan0: timed out
warn, wlan0: using IPV4LL address 169.254.208.57

Indeed. It's also the case for rt2x00, sadly. Lots of people wonder why...

Yes, that is certainly a strange regression. I would think including the better working code makes more sense than patching in some randomly stamped "stable" code. And the driver for the 3945 chip is definately not stable, but perhaps the other chips supported by this driver work much better. And if the "bleeding edge" version of the driver worked better means that we do not have to wait long for these problems to be ironed out. I thought the even minor kernel versions meant "stable", while the odd numbers meant "lots of new stuff has been added, lets test it".

lloeki · 2008-03-29 23:14:56

I reckon this is because while merging code into mainline, the code has to be reviewed so that it has minimal impact on the existing kernel code, and that it conforms to kernel coding standards and such. Thus a given revision is reviewed and merged, while development continues on the external branch. And the bigger the code, the longer the process... Hopefully once the merge is done, mainline code will catch up soon enough and finally sync in the following kernel versions.

Last edited by lloeki (2008-03-29 23:15:29)

broch · 2008-03-29 23:41:58

this might be Arch specific issue.
I have ipw3945 and custom kernel (either vanilla or zen) and I had similar issues with 2.6.23 kernels.
2.6.24.x and 2.6.25.rc seems to work pretty well and I can connect to any wireless network (laptop) on the first attempt.

cheer · 2008-03-30 06:57:57

I have the same, it seems that I couldn't connect to my Access Point with iwl3945. But using ipw3945 I can do it.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-03-26 21:20:38

wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#2 2008-03-26 21:22:27

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#3 2008-03-27 03:49:41

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#4 2008-03-27 10:02:55

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#5 2008-03-27 10:14:21

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#6 2008-03-27 14:12:36

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#7 2008-03-27 14:41:58

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#8 2008-03-27 18:42:10

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#9 2008-03-27 19:03:57

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#10 2008-03-27 19:30:06

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#11 2008-03-27 22:51:32

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#12 2008-03-29 23:14:56

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#13 2008-03-29 23:41:58

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

#14 2008-03-30 06:57:57

Re: wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

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