[SOLVED] wifi gone fubar, kubuntu 9.04, eeepc 4G 701

[lmilano]

[Update] If you upgrade to 9.04 from an older version on your Eee Pc 701, you may have old blacklist entries interfering with your wireless. Look for them in /etc/modprobe.d/ , remove them, and just use the open source driver, it works wonders!

Hi Folks

Yesterday I upgraded from 8.04 to 9.04 on my eee pc 701, and I lost my wireless network (of course jumping two releases in one upgrade is not recommended, but I wanted to keep my configurations and customization). Some details:

• Right after the upgrade it was working fine. I connected to one of my 2 AP's, and I could see the other one and my neighbours' and their dogs too.
• A couple (unrelated) packages were broken though, and after fixing those I lost wifi.
• I think the problem probably started after running "dpkg-reconfigure -a", which in retrospective was a bad idea (the solution to my problem was purging the offending packages and re-installing them). I forgot to use -phigh so I had to answer a million questions, maybe I screwed up there. I meant to use all defaults though.
• reinstalling kubuntu-default-settings didn't help
• Wicd doesn't help either, "no wifi networks found"
• To get wifi to work originally, I enabled it in Hardware Drivers
• ath_pci is loaded
• The wired connection works fine
• Thw wifi card is enabled in the bios and I see the blue led light indicating it is on.
• I tried compiling from source madwifi-hal the most recent version (that used to work in 8.04). No charm

Any suggestions besides installing from scratch (which I'd love to avoid) ? Many thanks in advance.

Update: I reinstalled all the linux kernel packages. Same thing. Notably, I tried disabling the wifi in the bios and the ethernet card (I use a usb ethernet dongle) to see that happened. The blue wifi led was out (as it should) at reboot, but during the bootup process it got turned on. Evidently, this is madwifi talking to the hardware. It has to be some other package not working. I also installed all the wlan-ng prackages recently to see if it would help. Should I uninstall those?>

[lmilano]

Re: wifi gone fubar, kubuntu 9.04, eeepc 4G 701

An update (and a bump, where all my friends when I need them ;-) ). I tried installing the previous kernel from the repositories (not the latest but the one before), and still no charm. I can;t believe I did have this running and lost it!

[vinnywright]

Re: wifi gone fubar, kubuntu 9.04, eeepc 4G 701

when you had it runing befor did you half to do eneything speshell to get it to work?

I see you sead the ath_pci drivr was loaded..........so strange.....I did have a prob once with the ath9k drver (I think ) not working right on my card even though everything sead it was working.

using ndiswrapper to load the xp drivers worked fine though......in fact that's how I'm runing now.

I know I know dume queshton but you are onley runing one network tool at a time right?

IE:wicd dosent like networkmanager or madwifi bla bla bla I know you know that but had to ask :P

I supose iwconfig and ifconfig see the card.......lsmod and lspci see the card and show the right mod. .......hummmm what elce.......?

VINNY

[lmilano]

Re: wifi gone fubar, kubuntu 9.04, eeepc 4G 701

Mmm. In order to get it running originally I had to load the "hardware drivers", I think this loads the madwifi drivers, and if I am not mistaken this means the ath_pci kernel module (I didn't bother checking because it was working). Do you have an eee 701? (different eeepc have different chipsets). Are you using ath9k? I think I saw an ath5k around.

Yes, otherwise there is nothing obviously wrong (not overlapping tools, and I compared with my fresh install of 9.04 64 bit on the desktop and I don't see anything obvious missing. It has to be something very subtle, maybe some configuration screw up coming from the massive dpkg reconfigure I did yesterday :-(

Thanks so much !

[vinnywright]

Re: wifi gone fubar, kubuntu 9.04, eeepc 4G 701

Do you have an eee 701? (different eeepc have different chipsets). Are you using ath9k? I think I saw an ath5k around.

no but my linksys PCI card uses the Anthrose chipset.

vinny@Kubuntu:~$ lspci
01:0d.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5008 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
vinny@Kubuntu:~$

and tryes to use the ath9k

vinny@Kubuntu:~$ ndiswrapper -l
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a future release.
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/oss-compat, it will be ignored ina future release.
net5416 : driver installed
    device (168C:0023) present (alternate driver: ath9k)
vinny@Kubuntu:~$

the net5416 is the windows driver I put in when the ath9k was acting
well strang at best......some times good some times not?

but it's ben just fine for monthes now with the ndiswrapper deal.
and it might have ben ok with the ath9k if I took the time to try but I new the ndiswrapper way and took it

but interesting you mention loading the hardware drivers I never tryed eneything like that I dont think ....that is if I understand you right ? .................I just expekted the network manager aplet to set it up if it saw it and iwconfig and ifconfig saw and sead was working.



VINNY

[img width=400 height=51]http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c291/vinnywright/banner1.png[/img]

[lmilano]

Re: wifi gone fubar, kubuntu 9.04, eeepc 4G 701

Right, if you go to KMenu ->Applications ->System -> Hardware Drivers you can enable some binary-only (not open source) drivers available for your hardware.

I'll take a look tonight and see what Atheros chipset I have. Thanks a bunch, Vinny!

-- Leo

[lmilano]

Re: wifi gone fubar, kubuntu 9.04, eeepc 4G 701

I just found this:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ection-724443/

Maybe I have some blacklisting going, I'll take a look tonight.

[lmilano]

Re: wifi gone fubar, kubuntu 9.04, eeepc 4G 701

That was it, there was an old blacklisting. Now I removed the old blacklist file, reverted to the open source driver (ath5k) in the Hardware Drivers tool and I have a great connection. Thanks, VINNY, for hanging in with me!