Feisty wireless broken after update

[Peter Enzerink]

Binary package hint: network-manager

On April 5 I updated the Feisty installation on two laptops running Xubuntu both with wireless PCMCIA adapters and both have been unable to connect to my router since then.

The first adapter is a Netgear WG511v1 based on a prism54 chipset which is natively supported in Linux.

The card is recognised and appears to be configured correctly but is unable to associate even though it detects my network. A tooltip on network-manager-gnome indicates it is waiting for a network key from my router before timing out.

The second adapter is a Netgear WG511v2 based on a marvell chipset which is supported using ndiswrapper and Windows drivers.

This card is more broken with no indication that it is recognised beyond the insertion of the card. The indicator lights on the card are not illuminated at any time from machine start through to network-manager-gnome startup.

[Peter Enzerink (ubuntu-enzerink)]

WG511v1 - Attached daemon.log showing negotiation by network manager.

[Peter Enzerink (ubuntu-enzerink)]

WG511v1

[Peter Enzerink (ubuntu-enzerink)]

WG511v1

[Peter Enzerink (ubuntu-enzerink)]

/etc/network/interfaces contains:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

[Peter Enzerink (ubuntu-enzerink)]

My network is WEP 128bit.

The machine with the WG511v1 was recently built and has worked with Edgy and Feisty until early April.

The machine with the WG511v2 was built in 2006 has worked correctly using Etch, Edgy and Feisty until early April.

This bug suggests some udev funkiness may be involved, although given I have a similar problem with two very different network cards this may be a furfy:

http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=21888

[Peter Enzerink (ubuntu-enzerink)]

WG511v1 uname -a

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

[Ian Ohr (munk3h)]

Hi Peter,

I have a Netgear WG511v1 with the isl3880 chipset that uses the prism54 driver natively. I too had no problem with this card until upgrading to Feisty on 2007-04-05. I clicked around with network-manager for a bit and got to the System | Administration |Network dialog. This showed two wireless devices although I only have the one prism54 card. wmaster0 was selected and wlan0 was not. I swapped it so that wlan0 was enabled. network-manager then showed me my home wireless network when I left clicked on the network-manager icon. I clicked to join the wireless network and it appeared not to be working. When I hovered over the network-manager icon it said something similar to "waiting to reteive key". What was hidden from me at the time due to a compiz bug was that network-manager had spawned a window asking me to enter the WEP key to join the network. A few alt-tab's later and I had input the key and joined the network. I hope this helps.

I have not rebooted this machine and I had to remove and replace the PCMCIA card before the driver would load properly. I did this before all the network-manager "fun". dmesg was showing this when I first booted the machine.

[ 36.698584] 0000:03:00.0 (prism54pci): Cannot read eeprom!
[ 36.698656] prism54pci: probe of 0000:03:00.0 failed with error -22

[Peter Enzerink (ubuntu-enzerink)]

I was prompted for for my keyring password and I don't get the firmware load issue so your problem appears to be slightly different.

[Peter Enzerink (ubuntu-enzerink)]

Interestingly on yet another laptop (IBM T40) running Feisty which has builtin wireless using the airo driver, I've had no issues at all.

Even more interestingly, when I plug my WG511v1 card into this working laptop I am unable to connect which suggests either a device recognition issue or something broken in support for at least two types of wireless adapters.

I'll generate some debug stuff from the working laptop.

[Ian Ohr (munk3h)]

I'm gonna file another bug in case my problem is a separate issue. I will post the bug# here after I have done that.

[Graham Morse (graham-morse)]

I believe I am having the same problem. I also have a netgear router and am unable to connect wirelessly. I tried removing my WEP password but that did not help. I am new to ubuntu tho so maybe I am just doing something wrong, but I was under the impression that the wireless connectivity would just work with feisty.

Graham

[tl (tl3000)]

I also have wireless connection problem with my WG511v1 after upgrading from Edgy to Fiesty. In Edgy, I was able use Ndiswrapper with the netwg511.inf driver for wireless connection with my 802.11g network using WPA. In Fiesty, I'd to blacklist not just prism54 but also prism54pci to just connect with a neighbor's unsecured network. WPA to my network would not work. My network is detected in the Network Manager but connection attempts times out and just default to connections with the neighbor's unsecured network. The signal levels for all detected networks are also significantly below what they should be normally--at least with what were shown for Edgy.

[Jan Schmidt (thaytan)]

I just upgrade a laptop to feisty and am having trouble with a PCMCI prism54 based card as well - it appears to associate with the router OK, but no traffic gets through for DHCP negotiation (this is on an open network - no WEP/WPA).

Setting an ESSID and IP address manually also doesn't work - iwconfig shows the card as associated with the router, but no traffic can get through. Pinging the gateway just times out.

This card is reported as:
03:00.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation ISL3890 [Prism GT/Prism Duette]/ISL3886 [Prism Javelin/Prism Xbow] (rev 01)

This was working fine int he 2.6.17 kernel I had before the upgrade - the card could talk to open networks fine, even though I couldn't get it to do WEP/WPA.

Let me know if any other information will be useful.

[Javier Jardón (jjardon)]

Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find.

[Peter Enzerink (ubuntu-enzerink)]

I don't believe this is a duplicate for two reasons.

I don't get an eeprom load failure:

[88098.194770] p54: LM86 firmware

I have the same loss of function for a marvell chipset using ndiswrapper.

[Peter Enzerink (ubuntu-enzerink)]

I checked the firmware at http://prism54.org/fullmac.html and it is the same as /lib/firmware/2.6.20-15-generic/isl3890 so this is definitely a different issue.

[tl (tl3000)]

I agreed with Peter... I also believe that the issues described here are different from Bug # 90902.

I was able to get my WG511v1 to finally connect wirelessly with WPA using the guidance found in the following Bug Report:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/105858

although it's only a temporary solution for now.

At least with the WG511v1, Bug # 105858 could possibly be related...

[Javier Jardón (jjardon)]

ok, my fault. De-duplicate and confirm it

Thank you for your work Peter

[Chonnawonga (brad-meredith)]

I am having the same problem: Netgear WG511v1, so the prism54 chipset, and it detects networks, but can't associate.

[Chonnawonga (brad-meredith)]

I should add that this card worked with no problems on Edgy, but has been unable to associate since doing a clean install of Feisty.

[Khalid Baheyeldin (kbahey)]

I am having the same problem, on a Dell Latitude CPxJ. It has a PCMCIA Prism54 card (Gigafast WF728-AEX) worked fine on Edgy.

Upon upgrading to Feisty, the card is recognized, and can scan for APs, but does not associate.

dmesg shows:

[ 42.764000] p54: LM86 firmware
[ 43.800000] wmaster0: Selected rate control algorithm 'simple'
[ 43.992000] wiphy0: hwaddr 00:0a:e9:08:69:86, isl3880

Then several occurrences of this error as well:

[ 142.420000] eth0: starting scan
[ 142.480000] wiphy0: frequency change failed
[ 142.540000] wiphy0: frequency change failed
[ 142.600000] wiphy0: frequency change failed
[ 142.660000] wiphy0: frequency change failed
[ 142.720000] wiphy0: frequency change failed
[ 142.840000] wiphy0: frequency change failed
[ 142.900000] wiphy0: frequency change failed
[ 142.960000] wiphy0: frequency change failed
[ 143.020000] wiphy0: frequency change failed
[ 143.080000] eth0: scan completed

I will attach the relevant info in subsequent comments.

[Khalid Baheyeldin (kbahey)]

iwlist scan output

[Khalid Baheyeldin (kbahey)]

lspci -vv output

[Khalid Baheyeldin (kbahey)]

lsusb

[Khalid Baheyeldin (kbahey)]

dmidecode

[Jan Schmidt (thaytan)]

Another thing to note about this bug is that I can't see mentioned is that my card is appearing as 2 distinct devices in the ifconfig list:
> ifconfig -a

wmaster0 IEEE 802.11g Frequency:2.412 GHz
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B
          Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Only the wlan0 device supports wireless commands, however:

> iwlist scanning

wmaster0 Failed to read scan data : Operation not supported
wlan0 No scan results

For me, this bug represents a fairly serious regression from Edgy.

[asis (supporto-asis)]

I can confirm the same behavior as reported by Jan Schmidt: no firmware loading problem and two different devices wmaster0 and wlan0.
No one is working. The latest kernel upgrade 2.6.20-16-generic didn't change anything.

My card is ISL3890 PCMCIA that works well on the same notebook and Edgy installation.
Thanks

[Quambo (thomaslist)]

I can confirm that too - same behaviour as that of Jan Schmidt (I did not try the new kernel). My card is a Netgear WG511v1 and does work without any problem with ubuntu 6.06.1.
With feisty the card does find some open networks but is not able to connect to any of them.

[dsiv (dsivjunk-cserai)]

Just wondering if anyone has found any sort of solution to this?

I simply see my Netgear WG511 (v1) scanning (yellow light blinking somewhat) with available network names displayed, but never able to connect.

[Edwardo (ewwsimpson)]

dsiv I'm exactly the same as you (yellow light blinking) . Although I can't see any sign of wireless in KNetworkManager (under Kubuntu that is). It was there initially (not working connecting to any network however) but since initial upgrade to Feisty I think I've had at least two further upgrades of kernel 2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP.

I find nothing under iwlist scanning, however I can find some networks by sudo iwling scanning... No idea how to proceed however.

[Edwardo (ewwsimpson)]

Apologies typo - to confirm,

> iwlist scanning

retrieved no networks,

> sudo iwlist scanning

found two networks (under an older kernel or windows I can usually find a couple more - not an issue though as I don't need to use the other two).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Beginning with the Hardy Heron 8.04 development cycle, all open Ubuntu kernel bugs need to be reported against the "linux" kernel package. We are automatically migrating this bug to the new "linux" package. However, development has already began for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. It would be helpful if you could test the upcoming release and verify if this is still an issue - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing . If the issue still exists, please update this report by changing the Status of the "linux" task from "Incomplete" to "New". We appreciate your patience and understanding as we make this transition. Thanks!

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.

[Colin Ian King (colin-king)]

This bug report is being closed because we received no response to the previous inquiry for information. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release, Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 - http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.