Network Manager runs Ralink RT2500 poorly

[ricardisimo]

Binary package hint: network-manager

This is more of a general problem I've been noticing than a specific breakage. My RaLink RT2500 802.11g Cardbus/mini-PCI wireless card ran flawlessly, and out-of-the-box under Dapper. When I upgraded to Edgy I had to help it find the right network. With Feisty it required some pretty serious tweaking, but I could still get it to run eventually at full speed.

Now, under Gutsy, NM won' t run the card at all. I had to install ndiswrapper, and even then the connection was slow as molasses. Without moving my antenna even a millimeter, I would run Gutsy (Ubuntu with ndiswrapper, as well as Kubuntu KNM) and then immediately run the Feisty Live CD. On the former my best speeds were in the 10-20 kbps range, while the latter would browse and download at around 500 kbps.

I'm probably just going to downgrade back to Feisty, but I thought one of the developers would like to know that there's a problem. Also, perhaps I could just downgrade Network Manager to the Dapper or Edgy version. Is that a possibility? Thank you in advance.

Here' s some info:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lspci -v
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661FX/M661FX/M661MX Host (rev 11)
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32
        Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64M]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS AGP Port (virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 64
        Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=64
        Memory behind bridge: dde00000-dfefffff
        Prefetchable memory behind bridge: cdd00000-ddcfffff

00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS963 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 25)
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0

00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
        Flags: medium devsel
        I/O ports at 0c00 [size=32]

00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (prog-if 80 [Master])
        Subsystem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS5513 EIDE Controller (A,B step)
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 128
        [virtual] Memory at 000001f0 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=8]
        [virtual] Memory at 000003f0 (type 3, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=1]
        [virtual] Memory at 00000170 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=8]
        [virtual] Memory at 00000370 (type 3, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=1]
        I/O ports at ffa0 [size=16]

00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0)
        Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems Unknown device a00b
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16
        I/O ports at e800 [size=256]
        I/O ports at ec00 [size=128]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
        Subsystem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
        Memory at dfffd000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]

00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
        Subsystem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 18
        Memory at dfffe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]

00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
        Subsystem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 20
        Memory at dffff000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 90)
        Subsystem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet Adapter
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 19
        I/O ports at e400 [size=256]
        Memory at dfffc000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Expansion ROM at dffc0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

00:08.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2500 802.11g Cardbus/mini-PCI (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Linksys WMP54G 2.0 PCI Adapter
        Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 21
        Memory at dfffa000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

00:0a.0 Modem: ALi Corporation SmartLink SmartPCI561 56K Modem (prog-if 00 [Generic])
        Subsystem: Smart Link Ltd. Unknown device 5459
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16
        Memory at dfff9000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        I/O ports at e000 [size=256]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000 AGP 8x] (rev c1) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 9363
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
        Memory at de000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
        Expansion ROM at dfee0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please follow the instructions at the Capture Log portion of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingNetworkManager and add your '/var/log/syslog' file as an attachment to your bug report? Thanks in advance.

[ricardisimo (ricardisimo)]

I have reinstalled Feisty. Would you lke me to run the Gutsy LiveCD and try to get this info for you? Thanks for replying.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Yes, that would be great.

[ricardisimo (ricardisimo)]

Sorry it took me so long, and also my apologies for not inserting commentary into this syslog, but i didn't quite understand how to do that.

This is off of the 7.10 LiveCD, where I first tried selecting my usual wifi network from Network Manager ("*essid*" in the log). It claimed to have a strong connection, but nothing would load. So I went about all of the usual solutions: I disabled "roaming mode" and manually entered my connection. This used to be "ra0" in previous versions of Ubuntu, but in 7.10 is called "wlan0". In all versions, however, Ubuntu always adds the suffix ":avahi" to the connection - as in "wlan0:avahi" - which doesn't exist and therefore effectively kills the connection.

The connection I then had was either still dead or too weak to be functional. I tried an experiment which had worked in the past: I invented a fictional essid named "test", tried connecting to it, and shortly thereafter reconnected to my usual network. I got some sort of a signal which allowed me to run a Google search, but little else. It dropped out a bit later.

Hope this is at all useful. thanks again for everything you do.

[ricardisimo (ricardisimo)]

Just curious... will there be a posting here regarding a resolution of the problem, or progress towards that end? Thanks.

[Marcus Granado (mrc-gran)]

hi, ricardisimo,
i don't know if you are experiencing problems with the kernel/drivers or with network-manager, but i think it is worth trying out wifi-radar if it is the latter. i've heard lots of cases of people whose network-manager refused to talk to their iwconfigs properly in the latest ubuntu releases, but wifi-radar would. just do an apt-get and try it out.

[Javier Jardón (jjardon)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 134660, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.