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#1 2013-02-24 17:41:53

nordog
Member
From: Iceland
Registered: 2009-02-22
Posts: 38

[SOLVED] Sporadic wifi when running a 3D accelerated desktop

EDIT: Changed the title from "Sporadic wifi after resuming from sleep" to better reflect the actual problem.

I rarely reboot my laptop, but rather just suspend it to ram when not using it. However, sometime in the last week or two, an update has caused my wifi to *sometimes* work only intermittently after resuming. Usually when I resume, wifi works properly, but once in a while the laptop will connect to the wireless network but either sites won't load at all, excruciating slowly, or by bursts of data transfer followed by nothing. Meanwhile, other devices will have no problem using the wireless connection. As a result, I'm having some trouble diagnosing the problem, so any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

My wireless network controller is the Intel 3945ABG and my system is using systemd.

Thanks in advance

Last edited by nordog (2013-04-29 19:28:22)

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#2 2013-02-27 18:04:49

nordog
Member
From: Iceland
Registered: 2009-02-22
Posts: 38

Re: [SOLVED] Sporadic wifi when running a 3D accelerated desktop

Ok, after some further digging around I've noticed the following in dmesg:

[ 1391.403908] wlan0: authenticate with 00:19:70:a4:d8:e3
[ 1391.405616] wlan0: send auth to 00:19:70:a4:d8:e3 (try 1/3)
[ 1391.410163] wlan0: authenticated
[ 1391.413253] wlan0: associate with 00:19:70:a4:d8:e3 (try 1/3)
[ 1391.416424] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:19:70:a4:d8:e3 (capab=0x431 status=0 aid=5)
[ 1391.422926] wlan0: associated
[ 1391.432836] wlan0: Limiting TX power to 20 (20 - 0) dBm as advertised by 00:19:70:a4:d8:e3
[ 1447.606550] iwl3945 0000:0b:00.0: Queue 2 stuck for 2003 ms.
[ 1447.606570] iwl3945 0000:0b:00.0: On demand firmware reload
[ 1447.650706] ieee80211 phy0: Hardware restart was requested
[ 1484.723232] iwl3945 0000:0b:00.0: Queue 2 stuck for 2296 ms.
[ 1484.723242] iwl3945 0000:0b:00.0: On demand firmware reload
[ 1484.759420] ieee80211 phy0: Hardware restart was requested
[ 1511.333227] iwl3945 0000:0b:00.0: Queue 2 stuck for 2230 ms.
[ 1511.333237] iwl3945 0000:0b:00.0: On demand firmware reload
[ 1511.369443] ieee80211 phy0: Hardware restart was requested
[ 2013.979874] iwl3945 0000:0b:00.0: Queue 2 stuck for 2246 ms.
[ 2013.979885] iwl3945 0000:0b:00.0: On demand firmware reload
[ 2014.016099] ieee80211 phy0: Hardware restart was requested

Restarting networkmanager with systemctl seems to help a bit, but after a while I run into the same problem again.

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#3 2013-02-28 02:08:49

frank604
Member
From: BC, Canada
Registered: 2011-04-20
Posts: 1,212

Re: [SOLVED] Sporadic wifi when running a 3D accelerated desktop

Google brought up an interesting article about the driver here http://www.dotkam.com/2008/11/17/config … on-ubuntu/  I don't use the iwl3945 driver so I am unable to test.   Caution, it is an old post and for ubuntu, however the reasoning makes sense and it won't hurt to try.  Basically it is disabling hardware scanning to force iwl3945 to use software scanning as well as replacing NM with wicd. 

Also double check the stuff from "other notes" in the wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi … 000-series
Doesn't hurt to try and see if any of these work for you.

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#4 2013-03-03 10:33:57

nordog
Member
From: Iceland
Registered: 2009-02-22
Posts: 38

Re: [SOLVED] Sporadic wifi when running a 3D accelerated desktop

frank604 wrote:

Google brought up an interesting article about the driver here http://www.dotkam.com/2008/11/17/config … on-ubuntu/  I don't use the iwl3945 driver so I am unable to test.   Caution, it is an old post and for ubuntu, however the reasoning makes sense and it won't hurt to try.  Basically it is disabling hardware scanning to force iwl3945 to use software scanning as well as replacing NM with wicd. 

Also double check the stuff from "other notes" in the wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi … 000-series
Doesn't hurt to try and see if any of these work for you.

Thanks for the link. I read through the article and even though it makes sense, I still found it strange that my hardware has been working fine for years until recently. I tried downgrading the kernel to version 3.6.9 and the issue seems to have disappeared. I still get some hardware restart requests (they also have occurred before) but at least I don't lose the network connection. I'll update to the 3.8 kernel when it's out and see if the issue persists.

EDIT: I spoke too soon, I've got a disconnection again, but it seems to happen a lot less frequently than before.

Last edited by nordog (2013-03-04 09:42:10)

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#5 2013-04-26 12:34:47

nordog
Member
From: Iceland
Registered: 2009-02-22
Posts: 38

Re: [SOLVED] Sporadic wifi when running a 3D accelerated desktop

I can't seem to crack this one. I've tried downgrading the kernel, kernel modules, firmware and headers to versions when the wifi was working perfectly using Arch Rollback Machine. I've tried using wpa_supplicant instead of NetworkManager, disabling other network interfaces, messing with bios options, and yet the problems persists. All I can think of now is just to reinstall the system and hope the problem goes away...

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#6 2013-04-29 19:27:07

nordog
Member
From: Iceland
Registered: 2009-02-22
Posts: 38

Re: [SOLVED] Sporadic wifi when running a 3D accelerated desktop

I've finally got this figured out.

After reinstalling Arch and starting with a very minimal install and adding each component one at a time I've figured out that the problem only occurs when I'm running an opengl accelerated window manager (or in some instances even just by using an opengl application). I noticed that I didn't have any wifi problems when running Fluxbox, so I tried disabling desktop effects in KDE, and the problem went away. What? How do these two components even influence each other? Anyway, I'm happy with this workaround.

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