Arch Linux

AJCR

Member

Registered: 2012-12-14

Posts: 14

WiFi constantly acting erratic on Toshiba Laptop.

I am running Arch (loving it) on a Toshiba Qosmio X505 laptop. I installed it about 7 days ago. It really is not a distro that holds your hand how I was used to with Ubuntu and Mint. So over the past week I have fidgeting non stop and have gotten pretty much EVERYTHING to work, and to work how I want it to. One thing that I keep coming back to constantly and keep failing in finding a solution (I have honestly done HOURS of searching for a solution and have not found one) is the WiFi. It acts very erratic at times. When I reboot, Wicd network manager gives me an error about not being able to start the Dbus. So I have to manually open up a terminal and execute "sudo wifi-menu" and there it scans for networks, and after failing to connect once or twice, eventually does connect to a network. After I connect through "sudo wifi-menu", Wicd works and lets me scan for other networks and see the network I am connected to. But this is all while I am still in the same session. If I log out or reboot, same problem starts all over. I also tried downloading wpa_gui and it has never really worked. I think only once have I opened it up and it was showing me the network I was connected to. It always gives me a "Could not get status from wpa_supplicant" error. Also, Network Manager has NEVER worked. When I first installed Arch, I installed Gnome and then after I was up and running with Gnome, I installed Cinnamon from the AUR. Neither in Gnome nor in Cinnamon has Network Manager ever worked. It does not give any kind of errors or anything. It is just fully blank for both the ethernet and wireless side. I am only coming here to you guys because I have run out of ways to look for a solution. Thank you.

 [adriano@localhost ~]$ lspci | grep -i net
0a:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8191SEvB Wireless LAN Controller (rev 10)
0b:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0)

Last edited by AJCR (2012-12-14 16:59:42)

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: WiFi constantly acting erratic on Toshiba Laptop.

My experiences with realtek have been pretty poor with Linux.  Though I was using the infamous rtl8192ce module.  Maybe you can see if there are any options you might be able to change when the module is loaded?  Are you using the rtl8192se module?  If so you should probably set the fwlps=0 and ips=0.  Those are low power settings that gave me crap when using the rtl8192ce module.  For the options avaialble and thei defaults use:

$ modinfo <module-name>

and to see what options are currently set/unset use:

# systool -m <module-name> -a 

Look into the man page for modules-load.d to get this going.

Edit: BTW, Welcome to the Forums!  Enjoy the wealth of information we have to offer here!

Last edited by WonderWoofy (2012-12-14 17:16:22)

AJCR

Member

Registered: 2012-12-14

Posts: 14

Re: WiFi constantly acting erratic on Toshiba Laptop.

My experiences with realtek have been pretty poor with Linux.  Though I was using the infamous rtl8192ce module.  Maybe you can see if there are any options you might be able to change when the module is loaded?  Are you using the rtl8192se module?  If so you should probably set the fwlps=0 and ips=0.  Those are low power settings that gave me crap when using the rtl8192ce module.  For the options avaialble and thei defaults use:

$ modinfo <module-name>

and to see what options are currently set/unset use:

# systool -m <module-name> -a 

Look into the man page for modules-load.d to get this going.

Edit: BTW, Welcome to the Forums!  Enjoy the wealth of information we have to offer here!

I tried the above, and it did not seem to work. I cannot figure out why. I also tried:

 [adriano@localhost ~]$ sudo wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf 

To see if I could get wpa_gui to stop giving me the "Could not get status from wpa_supplicant" error and this was the result:

 Could not set interface wlan0 flags: Operation not permitted
WEXT: Could not set interface 'wlan0' UP
wlan0: Failed to initialize driver interface 

I also tried running wpa_gui with gksu for elevated privileges. Also didn't work. What is highly annoying me is that if I install fedora, ubuntu, mint, or any other distro that comes with a DE preinstalled, WiFi works right out of the box like a charm. So there is no reason for it NOT to work here in Arch and I NEED/MUST find the solution to my problem.

Thanks.

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: WiFi constantly acting erratic on Toshiba Laptop.

Okay, then go use another distro... no one is forcing you to stay here.

If you wnat to actually try to debug the issue, rather than just whining, maybe you can specify what you actually tried instead of saying "I tried the above".  Did you actually set the module to load with those parameters? 

If you want to keep using some crazy gui, that is fine, but I have no idea about that.  I think the best way to go about it is go back to the basics, and learn to connect manually.  If you can do that, then you can move to the next step of trying it with wicd or network manager or whatever.