wireless network suddenly breaks

[Bogdan Butnaru]

Binary package hint: network-manager

Hi! This is Ubuntu Feisty, up-to-date. I have a Dell Latitude D620 laptop; I connect to a wireless network through the inbuild ipw3945-managed card. It's auto-configured by the network-manager thing, with DHCP.

Today I had a weird problem. It happened once more earlier this week, but I didn't think of keeping the logs that time. Before that I never used to have issues with the wireless, so it must be some recent change.

What happens: suddenly I notice the nm-applet shows I have no connection (ie all four "signal bars" are empty). I tried to disable the network from the applets menu (it worked), but when re-enabling I got no wireless option. iwconfig reported no wireless extensions for eth1 (my wireless interface).

/var/logs/user.log contained only a single relevant line:
Apr 5 11:44:04 cimer dhcdbd: dhclient 12498 down (9) but si_code == 0 and releasing==0 !
but syslog has a but more, I'll attach it next.

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

I forgot to mention: the keyring asked me for a password once, before I stopped/restarted networking. It didn't manage to connect.

I didn't have the inspiration to note the exact time I did each action. I'll remember if it happens again.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This seems to be a kernel bug but unfortunately we can't fix it, because your description doesn't yet have enough information.
Please include the following additional information, if you have not already done so (please pay attention to lspci's additional options), as required by the Ubuntu Kernel Team:
1. Please include the output of the command 'uname -a' in your next response. It should be one, long line of text which includes the exact kernel version you're running, as well as the CPU architecture.
2. Please run the command 'dmesg > dmesg.log' and attach the resulting file 'dmesg.log' to this bug report.
3. Please run the command 'sudo lspci -vvnn > lspci-vvnn.log' and attach the resulting file 'lspci-vvnn.log' to this bug report.
For your reference, the full description of procedures for kernel-related bug reports is available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies . Thanks in advance!

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

Hi! The output for "uname -a" is:

         Linux cimer 2.6.20-14-generic #2 SMP Mon Apr 2 20:37:49 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

There was at least an upgrade since I posted this bug report, but I don't think there was any kernel update. The file /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-13-generic has date 2007-03-25, and /boot/ vmlinuz-2.6.20-14-generic has 2007-04-02, so I'm pretty sure it's the same kernel I had when I had the problem. Probably both cases.

[yeti (utu)]

This applet *was* working for me on April 10, yesterday, after a large synaptic update. *Not* working today, April 11, after yet another large update. Networking itself still largely functional.

Yesterday, system had an annoying habit of not retaining wep key info.
Today, system doesn't keep asking for wep key, but fails to do
dhclient wlan0 on its own. Also doesn't show pretty bars icon any more.

[yeti (utu)]

No change after April 12 updates.

[yeti (utu)]

Synaptic upgrade to Network Manager 0.6.4-6ubuntu6 doesn't help, either.

[yeti (utu)]

After 7.04 full synaptic upgrade April 13,
Network Manager 0.6.4-ubuntu7 allows review of manual configuration, but does not give connection status info. Also, no bars icon.

[yeti (utu)]

I'm really impressed that network manager feisty bug list went from 155 complaints to 17 in just a few hours today.

May as well add this one as 'solved' too; I don't think it is a kernel problem.

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

I didn't have the problem since, but I haven't used the computer much in the mean time. It should probably be closed, I'll reopen it if it happens again.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This bug report is being closed due to your last comment regarding this being fixed with an update. Thanks again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Feel free to submit any future bugs you may find.