"Forced network disconnect" - how to steal ideas from Gentoo?

/dev/zero · 2012-03-27 11:01:56

Hello Archers,

About half-hourly, I get disconnected from the house wifi. The wifi is WEP and I connect with wicd. Before you try telling me not to use WEP, that's just preaching to the choir - I've already given the lecture.

To try and fix my disconnection issues, I put wicd into debug mode. When it disconnected again, I ran:

sudo grep -v "i[fw]config eth0\|i[fw]config wlan0" /var/log/wicd/wicd.log

and grepped the time when it happened (21:11); this gave:

2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: Forced disconnect on
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: /usr/sbin/dhcpcd -k wlan0
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: /usr/sbin/ip route flush dev wlan0
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: wpa_cli -i wlan0 terminate
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: /usr/sbin/dhcpcd -k eth0
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: /usr/sbin/ip route flush dev eth0
2012/03/27 21:11:21 :: wpa_cli -i eth0 terminate

I googled this "forced disconnect" problem and found this recent Gentoo thread. They claim it's a problem with wicd, the bug has been submitted, and in the meantime, there's a work-around involving "/etc/rc.conf".

The catch here is, they mean a Gentoo /etc/rc.conf, which seems rather different to ours. I tried Googling whether it's possible to directly convert them, but all I came up with seems to say:

You need to know what you're doing, and
It's not obvious.

TL;DR? Okay: how can I get started determining the Archlinux equivalent to putting this in a Gentoo /etc/rc.conf:

rc_dhcpcd_provide="!net"

(Possibly an X-Y problem, sure, I'd be interested to hear any other ideas people have.)

Gcool · 2012-03-27 11:23:26

I had a quick read of that thread and the related bug report.

I'm guessing the non-gentoo/Arch equivalent would be adding the same line in /etc/rc.d/wicd.

Trilby · 2012-03-27 11:28:56

Do you have !network in your daemons array?

It's a bit of a guess, but that is needed for wicd to work properly. It does make sense as the network daemon does run dhcpcd (or something similar) and does interfere with wicd.

toad · 2012-03-27 14:48:49

Or you could simply use another network manager for the time being. Mind, playing around is much more fun

Leonid.I · 2012-03-27 18:12:19

/dev/zero wrote:

Hello Archers,
About half-hourly, I get disconnected from the house wifi. The wifi is WEP and I connect with wicd. Before you try telling me not to use WEP, that's just preaching to the choir - I've already given the lecture.
To try and fix my disconnection issues, I put wicd into debug mode. When it disconnected again, I ran:
sudo grep -v "i[fw]config eth0\|i[fw]config wlan0" /var/log/wicd/wicd.log
and grepped the time when it happened (21:11); this gave:
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: Forced disconnect on
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: /usr/sbin/dhcpcd -k wlan0
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: /usr/sbin/ip route flush dev wlan0
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: wpa_cli -i wlan0 terminate
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: /usr/sbin/dhcpcd -k eth0
2012/03/27 21:11:20 :: /usr/sbin/ip route flush dev eth0
2012/03/27 21:11:21 :: wpa_cli -i eth0 terminate
I googled this "forced disconnect" problem and found this recent Gentoo thread. They claim it's a problem with wicd, the bug has been submitted, and in the meantime, there's a work-around involving "/etc/rc.conf".
The catch here is, they mean a Gentoo /etc/rc.conf, which seems rather different to ours. I tried Googling whether it's possible to directly convert them, but all I came up with seems to say:
You need to know what you're doing, and
It's not obvious.

TL;DR? Okay: how can I get started determining the Archlinux equivalent to putting this in a Gentoo /etc/rc.conf:
rc_dhcpcd_provide="!net"
(Possibly an X-Y problem, sure, I'd be interested to hear any other ideas people have.)

Are you sure you got their point? Your wicd starts OK and works fine, while their does not start at all... Besides, if you have a stable connection for a half hour, why do you need fixing dhcpcd?

Having said that, I had similar issues with wicd on a wpa2 enterprise network (after ~15 min -- no internet connection). I suspect this was related to ipv6, but by the moment I realized that, I got already fed up with wicd...

SInce Arch has ipv6 built in now, try completely disabling it via ipv6.disable=1 boot option and see if your problem persists. The suggested ipv6.disable_ipv6=1 apparently makes dhcpcd quite confused.

/dev/zero · 2012-03-27 18:47:53

Trilby wrote:

Do you have !network in your daemons array?
It's a bit of a guess, but that is needed for wicd to work properly. It does make sense as the network daemon does run dhcpcd (or something similar) and does interfere with wicd.

Well, wouldn't you just know it, but I do have the network daemon included - and I see now it says in the wiki to not run it concurrently with wicd. I should pay more attention to the wiki!

Okay, I will try disabling the network daemon and if my problems evaporate, I will sheepishly mark the problem solved .

Thanks for your time and consideration to everyone who has responded so far.

Trilby · 2012-03-27 18:50:34

/dev/zero wrote:

but I do have the network daemon included ... I should pay more attention to the wiki!

We all have our moments - thats why I always start troubleshooting at the simplest possible mistake. Just be glad I didn't ask if your computer was plugged in and if your neighborhood had power!

Arch Linux

#1 2012-03-27 11:01:56

"Forced network disconnect" - how to steal ideas from Gentoo?

#2 2012-03-27 11:23:26

Re: "Forced network disconnect" - how to steal ideas from Gentoo?

#3 2012-03-27 11:28:56

Re: "Forced network disconnect" - how to steal ideas from Gentoo?

#4 2012-03-27 14:48:49

Re: "Forced network disconnect" - how to steal ideas from Gentoo?

#5 2012-03-27 18:12:19

Re: "Forced network disconnect" - how to steal ideas from Gentoo?

#6 2012-03-27 18:47:53

Re: "Forced network disconnect" - how to steal ideas from Gentoo?

#7 2012-03-27 18:50:34

Re: "Forced network disconnect" - how to steal ideas from Gentoo?

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