Ubuntu
wicd package

After update on Oct 14 2008 wicd stopped working entirely

Asked by E. Mark Mitchell

My laptop's wireless connection has been working reasonably well for some time now after I got a fix for it after initial installation using wicd. It was working last night (Oct 14 2008) when I downloaded routine updates for my Ubuntu. It said I needed to reboot, and not long thereafter I shut down for the night.

Tonight when I booted up, the wicd is completely unable to locate any wireless networks whatsoever.

I mention the update because that's the only thing that happened recently that might have had any sort of effect (we've all had experiences where an update makes an existing program stop functioning properly). My wife's laptop (running a different wireless chipset with a different work-around to make it function) continues to work and detect the half-dozen networks in the area. I haven't activated or deactivated any hardware physically. So it must be something with my wicd, or a software interface of some sort with my modem, is all I can think of. And I'm no sort of programmer whatsoever.

It's Wicd version 1.5.3 and I'm happy to provide any other information that might be of use, or run any diagnostics, or copy/paste any system information from the terminal.

It's just frustrating, as you can imagine: yesterday, working just fine, today, completely and totally inert and useless. Thank God I've got a network cable handy...

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E. Mark Mitchell
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Revision history for this message
Tony Mugan (tmugan) said : 		#1

What version of Ubuntu are you using and what Window Manager?

Just wondering why you are not on the default Ubuntu with Gnome "Network Manager".

This might be another option for you if the latest wicd is broken.

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E. Mark Mitchell (bbanzai123) said : 		#2

Was looking for that data (version of Ubuntu) when I wrote the above; have forgotten how to find that data. Tell me how to find it out, I'll give you what comes back.

I'm on wicd because that's the only way I was able to get my wireless connection to work; the last time I was oh here, as I recall, was to try and fix that, some months ago, and that ended up being the only way we were able to get it working. And that fix has been working quite well since then, until....

I wouldn't mind getting a different work-around, but we'd have to try something new than was tried last time.

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Tony Mugan (tmugan) said : 		#3

In a terminal window your version of Ubuntu can be found with

cat /etc/issue

And the linux kernel details are from this command

uname -a

So you manually run wicd each time you start the machine to make the connection or it's been automated?

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E. Mark Mitchell (bbanzai123) said : 		#4

Okay, cat /etc/issue gets me "Ubuntu 8.04.1 \n \l"

And uname -a produces "Linux little-sparky 2.6.24-21-generic #1 SMP Mon Aug 25 17:32:09 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux" And yes, I named it "little-sparky," so sue me. :P

wicd had been automated to automatically connect to our home wireless router. Simple checkbox took care of that, actually.

I can't tell if my profiles (for my home, my parents, and my inlaws' home networks) are still there, but if it's a driver issue (noticed at least one person mentioned something exactly similar when I was coming down the list, and that was his theory) or something similar, then hopefully that wouldn't mess with the profiles.

Sorry, not meaning to confuse the issue. But I am slightly relieved that I'm not the only one having an issue with this; means it might be a traceable problem...

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E. Mark Mitchell (bbanzai123) said : 		#5

Nobody? Nobody's got an idea?

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Peter van de Pol (peter-rozenbottels) said : 		#6

Hi,

I am having the same trouble! Running Hardy, and I cannot use network-manager since my atheros wifi card is not supported.

Who can shed some light on this???????????????????

Revision history for this message
E. Mark Mitchell (bbanzai123) said : 		#7

See, it's not just me.

We may need to approach this from a different angle, but I'm going to give it another chance for some expert to offer an idea...

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Tony Mugan (tmugan) said : 		#8

When you boot up do you have an option to boot from a different linux kernel version i.e. something before 2.6.24-21?
Would be worth a try to see if the issue is related to kernel drivers.

Revision history for this message
E. Mark Mitchell (bbanzai123) said : 		#9

Nope. No difference in the booting; everything starts up exactly the same. Functionally, there's no difference in anything else but the wireless. It really just seems like wicd can't understand what the wifi chip is saying. And that only just happened after the specified update.

I've been preparing a big data dump to provide all the information I can to try and just figure out another way to connect to my wireless chipset. Do you think I ought to pitch the whole wicd plan and start fresh? If you can't think of a way to restart my wicd functionality (and I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling, to no effect), should I just restart?

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E. Mark Mitchell (bbanzai123) said : 		#10

Okay, you know what? Never mind.