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Out of the blue, as far as I can tell, my wireless connection has started to deal me lots of trouble lately. I see a range of different symptoms (but it may just be my interpretation), all of them happening right at or immediately after start up.
I have my connection set up with three wireless-wpa profiles in /etc/network.d/ and 'net-auto-wireless' in /etc/rc.conf. This has given me no problems up until a few days ago.
Sometimes when I start up my laptop I get a working Internet connection and sometimes I don't. On one occation I saw my wireless activity lamp kept blinking without an end, even though I had no working Internet connection.
At my last start up this was what I saw:
[root@thinkpad ~]# grep dhcpcd /var/log/everything.log | tail -n5
May 13 13:23:49 thinkpad dhcpcd: version 5.2.2 starting
May 13 13:23:49 thinkpad dhcpcd: wlan0: rebinding lease of 192.168.0.101
May 13 13:23:54 thinkpad dhcpcd: wlan0: acknowledged 192.168.0.101 from 192.168.0.1
May 13 13:23:54 thinkpad dhcpcd: wlan0: checking for 192.168.0.101
May 13 13:23:59 thinkpad dhcpcd: timed out
[root@thinkpad ~]# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"stokholm"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:24:01:AA:0C:96
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-37 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
[root@thinkpad ~]# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:21:6A:0C:FE:8A
inet6 addr: fe80::221:6aff:fe0c:fe8a/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:46 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:13450 (13.1 Kb) TX bytes:2273 (2.2 Kb)
[root@thinkpad ~]# ps aux | grep dhcpcd
root 2977 0.0 0.0 9172 1012 pts/3 S+ 13:35 0:00 grep dhcpcd
[root@thinkpad ~]# /etc/rc.d/net-auto-wireless restart
:: Stopping netcfg auto-wireless mode for interface wlan0 [DONE]
:: Starting netcfg auto-wireless mode for interface wlan0 [DONE]Sometimes restarting net-auto-wireless fails too.
What could it be, that's beginning to crap out on me this often?
Last edited by Lars Stokholm (2010-05-13 11:54:14)
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looks like dhcpcd is the culprit, as its releasing the ip addresses and not reacquiring it. you can try using static ip address with a static gateway/dns to see if your wireless fails then, if it doesnt, then the problem is dhcpcd.
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Good idea. Initially it seems to work fine. I'll try to keep this configuration for a few days, to see how it turns out and then return with a reply.
(As a matter of fact I don't even know why I'm running dhcp in the first place.)
Thanks.
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Unfortunately using a static IP didn't solve the problem. A minute ago I booted my laptop. At startup I was able to connect, but after a short while my wireless activity indicator kept blinking while I had lost my Internet connection.
[root@thinkpad ~]# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"stokholm"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:24:01:AA:0C:96
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-36 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
[root@thinkpad ~]# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:21:6A:0C:FE:8A
inet addr:192.168.0.10 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::221:6aff:fe0c:fe8a/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2307 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2202 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2394206 (2.2 Mb) TX bytes:443822 (433.4 Kb)
[root@thinkpad ~]# /etc/rc.d/net-auto-wireless restart
:: Stopping netcfg auto-wireless mode for interface wlan0 [DONE]
:: Starting netcfg auto-wireless mode for interface wlan0 [DONE]Restarting net-auto-wireless helped. As I see it, nothing to indicate my lack of Internet connection. There must be something failing somewhere - perhaps it's the same thing that causes the intensive activity on my indicator lamp - but what is it? Are there more commands or log files I could look into to debug?
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it may be a problem with power settings, maybe your wireless connection is being shut off due to inactivity or something, you can check /var/log/everything.log file for info. this kind of thing has happened to other users, you can check the forums, but i think they used the rfkill command.
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I'll try to see what 'rfkill list all' says the next time it happens. I don't believe there was ever anything relevant in /var/log/everything.log.
Thanks again.
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Here (pastebin) is what happened this morning, right before I left for work. Look at the highlighted lines at the bottom. I lost my connection for a while around the time of those lines. The connection "repaired itself" - the only thing I did was to wait. What am I looking at?
Last edited by Lars Stokholm (2010-05-20 12:32:47)
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it could be a application specific problem, try using wicd or simply using the terminal to manually connect to the network, see if it helps.
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Actually I forgot to say I'm now using wpa_auto from AUR. So I've been having trouble with both netcfg and wpa_auto.
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did u try manually using iwconfig to connect, i know that it doesnt work with wpa/wpa2, but for testing, can you change your wireless security to WEP and check. this will definitely tell whether it is an application problem, or a driver problem.
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No, I didn't try that and since I now only seem to be experiencing this one out of twenty times I use my laptop, sadly I don't think I have the patients for it... But thanks anyway.
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I think I've found something and I think I can reproduce. I might be getting into trouble when the connection I make to my wireless router (D-Link DIR-615) is the first one since the router was powered on.
This is what usually happens:
1) I turn on power to my router.
2) I go to turn on my laptop (this will be a few minutes after the router is turned on).
3) The laptop gets to X and by that time an Internet connection will almost have been established.
4) I notice that I have a working Internet connection, so Pidgin is started.
5) I refresh my pacman database, check my Gmail, my Usenet account or something similar.
6) Let's say I had started with Gmail: I open Firefox, click my Gmail bookmark and the page will start to load.
7) Now the connection dies. Firefox will display Gmail in it's title and a few other html-elements will have been recieved.
8) The wireless connection indicator led on my laptop will blink a lot while I have no connection.
[about 10-15 minutes goes by]
9) My Internet connection will be restored automatically.
Instead of waiting I can restart dhcpcd manually. That will also restore my connection.
Step 5-9 might repeat itself once I try to use my working connection again, though I don't think I've experienced it doing so more that two times in a row.
Now I'm able to reproduce, what should I look for? Anything I could try?
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try changing some settings in your router, such as its frequency or power or anything else you can see, there are other posts here where people have problems with wireless when using d-link routers.
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Try around with the wireless speed settings, in my experience g+n can sometime be shaky. You could also check if a firmware update is available, or try your luck with compat-wireless.
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