Ubuntu

8.04 - Wireless connection lottery

Asked by shouldersmagru

Hello, i'm using ubuntu 8.04 and all packages are up to date, as far as i can tell.

Basically i get a wireless connection no problem almost every other time my computer is switched on.

The times it doesn't work, it does pick up wireless networks, and the wireless icon changes to the two activity dots with the arrows pointing to each other, to show its trying to establish a connection, IP address and such. These usually flash green when i do get my connection, but by the looks of it, when its a time when it fails, it doesn't even appear to be sending any packets to the router, as there is no green indication for any direction.

My main question is what is the best way for me to determine what is as fault here? I'm using a belkin wireless router, and the connection is fine every time i boot into windows. The network is not encrypted (as i couldn't get any connection at all with encryption enabled.)

When i originally had trouble connecting to the encrypted network, i installed the nDis wrapper and windows driver for the atheros chip, but these are reported as not in use, even when i do have the internet.

Heres some details:

Motherboard: Abit IN9 32-Max Wifi
Wireless adapter: Abit air-space wifi (Atheros R242)

Results for lshw -C network:

  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter
       vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       logical name: wlan0
       version: 01
       serial: 00:15:af:14:2b:79
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ndiswrapper+net5211 driverversion=1.52+,06/21/2007,5.3.0.56 ip=192.168.2.5 latency=0 link=yes module=ndiswrapper multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g

And in hardware drivers:

Atheros Hardware Access Layer (HAL) - Enabled - Not in use
Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards - Enabled - Not in use

Thanks in advance.

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shouldersmagru
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Suprianto (suprie1983) said : 		#1

choose between ndiswrapper and ath_pci

afaik , if you don't want to use ndiswrapper, you could the patched driver for atheros AR5007 -- sorry i forgot the url --
if you want to use ndiswrapper , add "blacklist ath_pci" in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add "ndiswrapper" in /etc/modules

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shouldersmagru (shouldersmagru) said : 		#2

Thanks for replying. I'm just a little confused:

Is the ath_pci the atheros driver for linux, and the ndiswrapper is obviously allowing linux to use the atheros windows driver?

Are you saying that theres basically a conflict between two drivers on my system, between ath_pci and the ndiswrapper (and hence the windows driver) which is causing hit or miss connection on startup?

I take it that if the Atheros HAL and supprt for Atheros 802.11 w/less LAN cards are not in use even when i do have an internet connection, that the auth_pci driver is the one providing my internet connection?

To stick with that would i just remove the windows driver/ ndiswrapper using the ndiswrapper windows driver configuration utility from the main menu?

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Suprianto (suprie1983) said : 		#3

Q: Is the ath_pci the atheros driver for linux, and the ndiswrapper is obviously allowing linux to use the atheros windows driver?
A: Yes, ndiswrapper provided windows driver through emulation.

Q: Are you saying that theres basically a conflict between two drivers on my system, between ath_pci and the ndiswrapper (and hence the windows driver) which is causing hit or miss connection on startup?
A: Yes, using both drivers at the same time will cause conflict

Q: I take it that if the Atheros HAL and supprt for Atheros 802.11 w/less LAN cards are not in use even when i do have an internet connection, that the auth_pci driver is the one providing my intnernet connection?
A: yes, it's better if you download the driver from madwifi.org, since they provided the latest driver.

Q: To stick with that would i just remove the windows driver/ ndiswrapper using the ndiswrapper windows driver configuration utility from the main menu?
A: you could do that, or just remove the ndiswrapper from the '/etc/modules'

PS : i forgot, have you tried to rmmod ath_pci and then modprobe ndiswrapper ?

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shouldersmagru (shouldersmagru) said : 		#4

Sorry for my long delay, been a busy week.

I managed to solve the problem.

I dont think there was a confilct between ath_pci and ndiswrapper since ath_pci wasn't loading, it was never in the /proc/modules list when ubuntu started.

ndiswrapper was starting, even though it wasn't present in the /etc/modules list.

Anyway, i starting messing about:

With just the ath_pci driver running, (stored in the madwifi directory) the Hardware Drivers menu would show the Atheros HAL and Support for Atheros 802.11 wirelss cards as being present and in use. BUT the network icon was showing no wireless networks, or any wireless options.

So that wasn't even working when i did run it, which i guess means that driver needed updating or a patch to sort it out.

It turned out that when i started ubuntu and couldnt get a wireless connection, (although i could still see a list of networks) with the ndiswrapper driver, by removing the module then loading the module, i could get connected.

Through some digging this appears to be due to ndiswrapper loading before certain modules, one that was present in my /proc/ modules list:

ohci_hcd

So my solution was to open /etc/rc.local and add the following:

modprobe -r ndiswrapper
modprobe ndiswrapper

which unloads the ndiswrapper module then reloads it after ubuntu has finished loading all other multi user modules on boot.

So far i have had internet connection with no problems.