Wireless network keeps disconnecting in Intrepid

[Diabolo]

My wireless connection under Intrepid keeps disconnecting randomly several times an hour. This connection was rock stable under Hardy and the only thing which changed in my setup was an upgrade to Intrepid. Now it disconnects randomly, sometimes after 40 minutes, sometimes after 2 minutes, but generally at least once every 10 minutes. Then it connects again without problems (at least most of the times, because like twice a day it asks me for my WPA password). It is highly annoying.
None of these problems seem to show up in dmesg though.
I'm attaching my syslog.0 and wpa_supplicant.log as the problem is best visible there.
Is there any other information I should provide?

[C. Reis (reic)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It would be helpful if you could provide the information of the command sudo lspci -vvnn > lspci-vvnn.log by uploading the .log - file.
Also, please attach the logfiles created by the following commands:
uname -a > uname-a.log
cat /proc/version_signature > version.log
dmesg > dmesg.log
You'll find the logfiles in your /home directory.
Thanks in advance.

[Diabolo (diabol0)]

Thank you for your reply. I've attached the logs you requested.
I forgot to mention that the machine is an Asus A6KM laptop and the wi-fi card is based on Intel 2915ABG chipset (running on ipw2200 driver) connecting to 3Com OfficeConnect AP with 802.11G wireless, secured by WPA-PSK (TKIP). The SSID of the network is hidden.
I also noticed, that the connection is more likely to disconnect when it's idle. When there is some traffic flowing (BitTorrent, FTP) the disconnections are much less frequent (like twice a day instead of 10 times an hour). I don't really know if that's a coincidence or not, just wanted to share my observations. I'll be watching this behavior and post here if it holds true or not.
I must add as well that under Hardy this same setup could be running for days without any loss of connection.
Thanks for your help!

[C. Reis (reic)]

Hi there, thank you for taking time to improve your bugreport!
Thanks to your additional information, I believe that this Bug is a duplicate of the following bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/264104 which is marked as "Fix commited"

I'd propose I mark this one as a duplicate, would you agree?

[Diabolo (diabol0)]

Hi!
I believe my problem is of a different nature. I'm running kernel 2.6.27-7.16 (the newest one), so this problem should be solved already a while ago (the fix for the other bug was committed in 2.6.27-7.11) but it isn't as I'm experiencing the effects even now.
Just to check if the fix for the other bug is really working on my setup I did:

$ cat /sys/module/ipw2200/parameters/associate

only to receive:

0

which basically means that the other fix is in effect.
Also my symptoms seem to be a bit different. It seems that the other bug is manifested in dmesg by the line:

ipw2200: Failed to send SYSTEM_CONFIG: Already sending a command.

while I'm not getting any of that. That's how my dmesg looks like:

diabolo@silverfire:~$ dmesg | grep ipw2200
[ 18.270057] ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.2kmprq
[ 18.270063] ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
[ 18.270172] ipw2200 0000:00:09.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[ 18.270629] ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection
[ 18.270681] firmware: requesting ipw2200-bss.fw
[ 22.672880] ipw2200: Detected geography ZZE (13 802.11bg channels, 19 802.11a channels)
[14291.899346] ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting.
[14292.410705] ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting.
[30937.291767] ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting.
[30937.793693] ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting.
[61218.959440] ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting.

These firmware related errors are a bit worrying but they don't really seem to be related to this bug as they appear much less frequently then the bug itself. These are today's manifestations of the bug:

diabolo@silverfire:~$ uptime
 21:03:23 up 21:32, 2 users, load average: 0.44, 0.47, 0.45

diabolo@silverfire:~$ grep deactivating /var/log/syslog
Nov 10 11:36:42 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 13:01:22 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 16:00:02 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 16:05:02 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 16:43:22 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 16:45:22 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 16:49:37 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 17:05:57 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 17:28:02 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 17:31:42 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 17:33:42 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 17:49:23 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 17:54:23 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 18:18:43 silverfire NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Nov 10 18:45:...

[C. Reis (reic)]

I just talked to the guys in #ubuntu-bugs. First of all, this seems more like a network-manager problem, furthermore the following bug seems to be related to yours:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/292054

Would you mind checking if your bug is a duplicate of the above mentioned? Also, could you attach a logfile as described here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingNetworkManager ?
Thank you.

[Diabolo (diabol0)]

Hi,
It seems that the other bug is more about network-manager loosing the WPA passphrase rather then loosing the connection. My system might be affected by it though (those rare occasions when the system asks me for passphrase I mentioned above) but that's not what this bug report is about.
Nevertheless I will try the development version of network-manager later on today and will post an update whether it helped or not.

[Tobias Jost (tjost)]

I can confirm this bug with an intel bg2200 wlan card with ipw2200 driver (Acer Extensa 3000)

I do think it is related to the "firmware restarting" error message in dmesg output

I have quite good connectivity when having a strong signal. with a mediocre connection or when putting load on the connection (torrent, downloads, ...) the connection is dropped and can't be reconnected without reloading the ipw2200 module.

[Diabolo (diabol0)]

C. Reis:
Due to your suggestions I've replicated the problem in this syslog fragment. I also used debug mode of ipw2200 for it, so I hope it will shed more light on the case.
Just to confirm - ATM I'm using :
linux-image-2.6.27-8-generic - v.2.6.27-8.17
network-manager - v.0.7~~svn20081018t105859-0ubuntu2~nm4
and the problem is still present.

[Diabolo (diabol0)]

And just a list of today's occurrences of the bug.

[arno_b (arno.b)]

It is not a linux kernel issue: I have downgrade to nm 0.6.6 and now my wireless connections work perfectly with the same kernel (2.6.27-8-generic).

[Tobias Jost (tjost)]

I don't think it is NetworkManager related. I uninstalled nm and am using wicd for WLAN Management now, still the problem persists. I am using intrepid with kernel 2.6.27-7-generic though (haven't got any update notice yet).

Whenever there is load on the connection i get the "firmnware restarting" errors in dmesg and the WLAN Led flickers irregularly. Is there anything more I can provide to help solving this annoying problem?

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

@ Arnaud Blouin : I do not believe that is the same, since this bug is present if network manager is removed from the system. If downgrading nm could fix it, it should not be present without nm. Thanks for trying to help.

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

[Oliver Joos (oliver-joos)]

I can confirm this behaviour, too.

No issues with Feisty...Hardy - hours of smooth video-streaming with up to 12MBit/s!
With Intrepid LiveCD the driver "ipw2200" crashed already 3 times like this:

Nov 15 00:59:14 ubuntu kernel: [24161.636049] ipw2200: Failed to send SSID: Command timed out.
Nov 15 00:59:48 ubuntu kernel: [24195.640125] ipw2200: No space for Tx
Nov 15 00:59:48 ubuntu kernel: [24195.640140] ipw2200: Failed to send SSID: Reason -16
Nov 15 01:00:08 ubuntu kernel: [24214.789101] ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting.

To reconnect I just have to reload the driver:
> sudo modprobe -r ipw2200 ; sudo modprobe ipw2200

hope this helps

[Oliver Joos (oliver-joos)]

Hi again,
I can reproduce this "Firmware error detected. Restarting." on Hardy. Not suprising, as the ipw2200 firmware is the same since March 7 2006. It occurs when transfering much data. To test I receive a big file through NFS with about 29 MBit/s.

With Intrepid the error is much more frequent than with Hardy. It looks like the network stack in 2.6.27 has been further optimzed and puts more stress on the firmware. One strange observation which might help: the time between "Firmware error detected. Restarting." is always an exact multiple of 30 seconds!

I use WPA2 on a HP Compaq nx8220 with an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG and my router is a Linksys WRT54GL with Tomato firmware (based on Linux 2.4.x)

[Kevin Bluck (kevin.bluck)]

I have this same problem with frequent wireless disconnects since upgrading to Intrepid. Mine is with a Atheros AR2413 chipset. I've attached various logs in hopes they will be useful.

[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.

[lifestream (lifestream)]

Okay, so what can we do now?
I got the same problem, but with the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG.

sudo modprobe iwl3945 "fixes" it for me, so I don't have to reboot. But my grandma I'm sure cannot remmember that everytime wifi goes down.

[lifestream (lifestream)]

Oops, just wanted to add that my connection is unsecured (at home, on campus its the campus-wide wireless, and the one at the library). You'd think its the wireless connection being used by too many people, making the routers drop connections, but at home, only my laptop's MAC address is allowed to connect to the router, and there's no one on campus because it's christmas break.

My connection keeps being dropped in all those places, as said, sudo modprobe iwl3945 "fixes" it for me so that I am able to connect again.

I'll post the logfiles if requested, but it doesnt seem anyone is working on this bug anymore.

[sanath (dayanandasaraswati)]

I too have a similar problem. My machine is Dell Inspiron 1525. I had rock solid internet connection untill the day I messed up with dhcp while trying to net boot a machine. I cant remember the sequence of events that lead to this problem. I did a lot of installing and uninstalling of rarpd, dhcp3-server,tftpd,tftp,tftpd-hpa,tftp-hpa packages according to some tutorials on the net. So I really dont remember what I did. But after that incident, my WiFi gets disconnected after every 5 mins. Connection over the ethernet is rock solid and I usually keep my computer connected to the internet for days together. If my case could suggest a clue to the experts to solve the whole bug it'll be fantastic.

[Mikael Bergqvist (mikaelb)]

This disconnection happens very frequently. The network was barely up long enough to write this:
Jan 14 21:29:26 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state change: 7 -> 0
Jan 14 21:29:26 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state change: 0 -> 2
Jan 14 21:29:26 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state change: 2 -> 3
Jan 14 21:29:27 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state change: 3 -> 0
Jan 14 21:29:31 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state change: 0 -> 3
Jan 14 21:29:33 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state change: 3 -> 0
Jan 14 21:29:36 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state change: 0 -> 3
Jan 14 21:29:39 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state change: 3 -> 0
Jan 14 21:29:40 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state change: 0 -> 3
Jan 14 21:29:41 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): device state change: 8 -> 3
Jan 14 21:29:41 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11).
Jan 14 21:29:41 aronnax NetworkManager: <info> eth1: canceled DHCP transaction, dhcp client pid 9549
Jan 14 21:29:41 aronnax NetworkManager: <WARN> check_one_route(): (eth1) error -34 returned from rtnl_route_del(): Sucess
Jan 14 21:29:41 aronnax avahi-daemon[4610]: Withdrawing address record for 192.168.1.5 on eth1.
Jan 14 21:29:41 aronnax avahi-daemon[4610]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface eth1.IPv4 with address 192.168.1.5.
Jan 14 21:29:41 aronnax avahi-daemon[4610]: Interface eth1.IPv4 no longer relevant for mDNS.

[sanath (dayanandasaraswati)]

My problem was solved once I uninstalled Network Manager and install wicd. Now I'm working round the clock without even getting disconnected for once.

[Diabolo (diabol0)]

Thank you for the tip about wicd.

I guess that's the only way for me to be able to use Intrepid.
For now I went back to Hardy, as Intrepid is giving me a lot of
headache, not only because of this bug but several others as well.

--
Best regards,
Diabolo

[Diabolo (diabol0)]

Thank you for the tip about wicd.

I guess that's the only way for me to be able to use Intrepid. For now I went back to Hardy, as Intrepid is giving me a lot of
headache, not only because of this bug but several others as well.

[Jeremy Nickurak (nickurak)]

I see the symptoms of this bug, but usually only when I'm on an 802.1x network (or at least substantially more frequently). Running "sudo killall -9 wpa_supplicant" sometimes gets it behaving better, but I don't have anything concrete to back that up, and sooner or later the behavior crops up again, so it may just be my imagination.

[Kevin Bluck (kevin.bluck)]

Thanks also to sanath for the wicd tip. wicd was a slight hassle to install. It's not in the standard universe repo for Intrepid, so you have to perform a couple of steps to add their repo to your update sources. Their website does provide clear instructions that worked as advertised, so type (or copy/paste) carefully and you'll be fine.

Once installed, I found it considerably easier to configure for wireless than was network manager. Even ignoring the fact that my wireless doesn't constantly drop anymore, I like it better than network manager anyway; I'll be keeping it even if they fix this bug.

Apparently, wicd will be in the universe repo come Jaunty, so the minor install hassle will go away completely.

Heartily recommended.

http://wicd.sourceforge.net/download.php

[Jeremy Nickurak (nickurak)]

Wicd also improved the situation for me here, except it's no where near as slick as Network-Manager.

[DataMatrix (datamatrixbg)]

I've been having same or similar issue with network manager since (first days of 8.10 - intrepid) I got my current notebook (ASUS X71A). Network manager keeps disconnecting and reconnection on some networks with no good reason, so I've removed it from rc2.d and wrote my own set of scripts (based on iwconfig, wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd) which work fine. I can't recall any errors occuring, something just fails. I have just upgraded to 9.04 and the problem persists, but I have also noticed that my scripts also can't get connected at first. I get "ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan1: link is not ready" in dmesg. After a router restart (WRT54GL 1.1 \w DD-WRT) my scripts work fine, but NM still disconnects randomly. I've tested it on some unecrypted networks and it works fine. I suppose it's a problem in the encryption mechanism or communication problem with the WRT54GL (also tried other routers if the same model) router.

[Bryan Wu (cooloney)]

Unfortunately it seems this bug is still an issue. Can you confirm this issue exists with the most recent Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 release - http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-9.04-desktop . Please let us know your results. Thanks.

[Saleh (salehjamal)]

I am using Jaunty 9.04 and I can confirm this behaviour. The disconnection is random and happens most frequently when the connection is idle (no traffic). I've removed network-manager and installed wicd. So far, no disconnections.

I am using Acer TravelMate 3270 with Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG.

[Sergio Barjola (sbarjola)]

Can you also confirm this issue exists with the most recent Karmic Koala 9.10 Alpha release? ISO CD images are available at http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/ . Thanks in advance.

[Jeremy Nickurak (nickurak)]

I appear to have this problem under network-manager 0.8~a~git.20090820t182117.cb60390-0ubuntu2

I have another bug filed at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/427102 with information about my experiences.

Like others, switching to wicd has completely eliminated the problem.

[Oliver Joos (oliver-joos)]

As I wrote earlier here I use WPA2 on a HP Compaq nx8220 with an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG and had this problem from Intrepid to Jaunty. In Karmic it only occurs if I transfer faster than about 28000 kbit/s.

Now I checked Lucid 10.04 alpha 2 and it is finally *FIXED* and faster than ever before: continuous throughput with 30460 kbit/s with NFS!

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, I am closing it because the bug has been fixed in the latest development version of Ubuntu - Lucid Lynx.

If you need a fix for the bug in previous versions of Ubuntu, please follow the instructions for "How to request new packages" at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports#request-new-packages

[Jeremy Nickurak (nickurak)]

Any sense at all what changed to fix this?

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 09:01, Charlie Kravetz <email address hidden>wrote:

> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. However, I am closing it because the bug has been fixed
> in the latest development version of Ubuntu - Lucid Lynx.
>
> If you need a fix for the bug in previous versions of Ubuntu, please
> follow the instructions for "How to request new packages" at
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports#request-new-packages
>
> ** Changed in: linux (Ubuntu)
> Status: Incomplete => Fix Released
>
> --
> Wireless network keeps disconnecting in Intrepid
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/295414
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
Jeremy Nickurak -= Email/XMPP: <email address hidden> =-

[Jeremy Nickurak (nickurak)]

Specifically, was it a kernel change, or a change in wpasupplicant, or dhclient, or network-manager?

[Koyji (kcrosley)]

Wicd worked for me. I installed via Synaptic Package Manager and it uninstalled Network Manager and installed Wicd. This problem has been getting on my nerves for over a month now and I'm happy that it's finally fixed.

[tat2ed (akaretro)]

Installing wicd and removing NM fixed this issue for me.