On fresh Precise reinstall -- wpa_supplicant problem.

[GreyGeek]

On my previous install of Precise, which ran for 18 months, I was having trouble with the wireless disconnecting and reconnecting. Then, it started happening to my eth0 connection too. So, after about 6 months of putzing around I decided to reinstall Precise, using 12.04.3.

It went well and I my wired connection has been rock solid, except for when I installed the "stable" Google-Earth package and all the ia32 junk it required. A couple days ago I stripped that stuff out and my eth0 connection has been rock solid again.

A while ago I decided to try my wireless connection. It would time out waiting for "authentication". I opened the Ksysmonitor and noticed that wpa_supplicant was waiting for something. I right moused on it and selected "show the application windows". Nothing appeared. So, I selected the "Continue" interrupt and immediately a password dialog appeared. I entered it and my wireless connection was established.

Strange, since the password is in the networkmanager wireless configuration for my wireless connection.

I reinstalled all the relevant software and redid the wireless connection configuration and rebooted. Didn't help.
Luckily, I don't use my wireless because the router is only two feet away from my laptop, and the wireless connection works well with my wife's Kubuntu, and with everyone else who drops by and connects.

[vinnywright]

for what it's worth .......I have had the wireless drop out on me , but only on battery power and after a short period of inactivity .
usually killing the power to the wireless device (the button on the keyboard) and re-powering it will make it reconnect.

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

Just like before, when my Internet connection drops out there is no trace of a reason in any of the logs. nm-tools still shows everything hunky-dory. But, I can't get an ping return from Google.com. When I issue:

sudo service network-manager restart

my connection starts right up and works great.

I've been looking for a pattern and the most consistant one I see is that the disconnect occurs while watching YouTube videos. If I don't watch any videos the connection stays up, or it has so far.

[GreyGeek]

So far lasted for about an hour more.

I decided to do a little research and found that the problem with NetworkManager disconnecting is common among distros and with a variety of drivers.

One person said he solved the problem by blacklisting his wifi driver. That gave me a hint and I took it a step farther.

I put BOTH my ath9k wireless driver and my atl1c ethernet driver in blacklist.conf. Then I modified /etc/network/interfaces.
It only had

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

and I changed it to:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Also, I got tired of no log messages telling me about network manager's failures so I search around and found out that if I changed
/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
to

[main]
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile
dns=dnsmasq

no-auto-default=4C:72:B9:2D:8D:99,

[ifupdown]
managed=true

[logging]
level=WARN
domains=DNS,SUPPLICANT,ETHER,WIFI,IP4, IP6

Changing "managed" from "false" to "true" tells NetworkManager manage the network interfaces. It's default setting is "false", which I didn't know. Since my 12.04.3 came with "managed" set to "false" NetworkManager was consulting /etc/network/interfaces, which had only the loopback info in it.
Adding the three stanzas relating to eth0 gave NetworkManager control of eth0. Since I had no reference to wlan0 in /etc/network/interfaces NetworkManager didn't not activate my wifi and there is no button available to activate it. It is as if I didn't have a wireless chip.

Anyway, my eth0 connection hasn't disconnected once in the last 10 hours, the longest run without a break that I have had since early last spring.

[SteveRiley]

From man networkmanager.conf:

   [ifupdown]
       This section contains ifupdown-specific options and thus only has
       effect when using ifupdown plugin.

       managed=false | true
              Controls whether interfaces listed in the 'interfaces' file are
              managed by NetworkManager.  If set to true, then interfaces
              listed in /etc/network/interfaces are managed by NetworkManager.
              If set to false, then any interface listed in /etc/net‐
              work/interfaces will be ignored by NetworkManager. Remember that
              NetworkManager controls the default route, so because the inter‐
              face is ignored, NetworkManager may assign the default route to
              some other interface.  When the option is missing, false value
              is taken as default.

By extension, interfaces not listed in /etc/network/interfaces are managed by NM regardless of what's in networkmanager.conf.

Here is my /etc/network/interfaces:

steve@t520:~$ [B]cat /etc/network/interfaces[/B] 
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

And my /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf:

steve@t520:~$ cat /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf 
[main]
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile
#dns=dnsmasq

[ifupdown]
managed=false

And all my interfaces are properly controlled by NetworkManager.

Note: I've disabled the dnsmasq plugin because I don't want my PC to run a local caching-only name resolver.

[GreyGeek]

From man networkmanager.conf:
[code] ....

Note: I've disabled the dnsmasq plugin because I don't want my PC to run a local caching-only name resolver.

I decided to do the same. In the last day I haven't had any dns problems.