Question about Ubuntu

Padgeman

Hey all,

I've been using ubuntu for a good while now, on and off, I think I've been using it since 7.10. I know it's nice and all, but there's one thing that keeps me away from using it all the time.

I think I might be the only one having this problem, a google search turned up nothing, but basically on every install of Ubuntu I've ever done, i've ran into the same bug over and over again with Wireless Networking. Basically, back in the day when making wifi work at all was tricky, I managed to get my wireless card to work using ndiswrapper, and all was well. After a couple of restarts though, something seems to break inside the OS, and I don't know how or why.

It says that I am connected, and I know my wireless card is working and has a working driver, but DHCP just seems to spontaneously crap out! At the start, I thought it was something I had done, but I have ran into the same problem in 8.04, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10 and now, 10.04. I have no idea what causes it, but the only fix is to use static IP settings. Does anyone else run into this problem? I've installed Ubuntu on 2 laptops and a netbook, and the same thing every time.... It only ever happens when connected wirelessly though, and it happens consistently, no matter what network i'm using (or trying to :pac:) Can anyone help?

PogMoThoin

You using the latest 10.04 version? Have You tried Mint, it has better support for troublesome wireless drivers, plus its nicer IMO, if You like Ubuntu You might love it.

Padgeman

PogMoThoin wrote: »

You using the latest 10.04 version? Have You tried Mint, it has better support for troublesome wireless drivers, plus its nicer IMO, if You like Ubuntu You might love it.

Yeah, i'm using 10.04 now, but the problem has followed me across the last few versions now! Ah I don't think it's the drivers, cause the card works fine until you hit the magic number of restarts, and then it breaks. I have used Mint, but I just find myself coming back to Ubuntu every time

niallb

Posting the model of your wireless card and computer are kind of necessary before you're going to get any sort of useful answer.
Can you post the USB ID by opening a terminal and typing in

lspci | grep Network

paste in the line and we'll see what comes up from people with similar ones.
Do you get any wireless error messages in your logs when it locks out?
Have you ever seen the words "manual roaming" in the logs when this happens,
or has your wireless ESSID changed to something unreadable pending a restart?

Padgeman

niallb wrote: »

Posting the model of your wireless card and computer are kind of necessary before you're going to get any sort of useful answer.
Can you post the USB ID by opening a terminal and typing in

lspci | grep Network

paste in the line and we'll see what comes up from people with similar ones.
Do you get any wireless error messages in your logs when it locks out?
Have you ever seen the words "manual roaming" in the logs when this happens,
or has your wireless ESSID changed to something unreadable pending a restart?

Ok, here's the wireless card's ID:

01:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)

it's working for now, but there are times when it comes up to say it's connected at login, but it isn't really, or it is connected and hasn't got an IP address. There are no error messages, ever, and the wireless ESSID never changes either!

cc

Padgeman wrote: »

Ok, here's the wireless card's ID:

01:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)

it's working for now, but there are times when it comes up to say it's connected at login, but it isn't really, or it is connected and hasn't got an IP address. There are no error messages, ever, and the wireless ESSID never changes either!

I have a compaq presario and the same internal wireless card. Has worked fine since every release since 9.04, before that was using Suse with no probs. Have you tried booting one or two other distros from a live cd?

PogMoThoin

Its a pci card, buy another, it wont break the bank

Snowbat

Padgeman wrote: »

I've installed Ubuntu on 2 laptops and a netbook, and the same thing every time....

Sounds like the problem is your wireless router then, or have you tried on different routers too?

Have you tried the updated Atheros Linux driver? I'd sooner use that than ndiswrapper and a Windows driver.

loldog

Have you tried using wicd instead of Network Manager? I think it's much more stable than nm-applet.

.

niallb

Are you still using ndiswrapper ?
There are a small number of options as to which driver to use for those cards.
When they work though, they're really good. I'll dig and see if I've one around,
and see how it works with latest ubuntu in my machine.
It does however seem possible the problem has other elements if it also affects a second laptop and a netbook. What model is the netbook? Might be easier to find info about that.

Padgeman

cc wrote: »

I have a compaq presario and the same internal wireless card. Has worked fine since every release since 9.04, before that was using Suse with no probs. Have you tried booting one or two other distros from a live cd?

Yeah, I tried Fedora and Slax, and I couldn't even get my wireless card to work in Fedora at all, so I gave up (granted this was a couple of years ago now!!) I'll try another distro and see what the story is.

PogMoThoin wrote:

Its a pci card, buy another, it wont break the bank.

Slight problem there, it's a netbook, an Acer Aspire One, so upgrading the PCI cards in that are beyond my skills

Snowbat wrote:

Sounds like the problem is your wireless router then, or have you tried on different routers too?

Have you tried the updated Atheros Linux driver? I'd sooner use that than ndiswrapper and a Windows driver.

I actually did think it was my router, for a long long time, so I took it to a friend's house, connected it there, and then the same problem came up. I'm actually using the native Linux drivers now, I haven't been using ndiswrapper for a good while, I only used it when I really needed to, just to make it work.

loldog wrote:

Have you tried using wicd instead of Network Manager? I think it's much more stable than nm-applet.

I must admit, I haven't tried wicd, I'll give it a go tonight and see what happens.

niallb wrote:

It does however seem possible the problem has other elements if it also affects a second laptop and a netbook. What model is the netbook? Might be easier to find info about that.

It's an Acer Aspire One D250, and the laptop before it was a somewhat old Lenovo Thinkpad, with a Broadcom card built in. My first thoughts were that I had configured the card wrong or something, but this was when getting wireless to work was a real pain. For the last few versions of Ubuntu anyway, all the cards I've been using have worked just out of the box driver wise, but suddenly and mysteriously stop after a couple of restarts. What happens though, is that the computer isn't getting an IP address, when you look at the network config, it either has a self-assigned address or an address of 0.0.0.0. I don't think it is my modem though, all my other wireless things work ok, and the same problem happened when I tried it somewhere else

Thanks all for the responses though, much appreciated!

Naikon

PogMoThoin wrote: »

You using the latest 10.04 version? Have You tried Mint, it has better support for troublesome wireless drivers, plus its nicer IMO, if You like Ubuntu You might love it.

Debian Lenny/Squeeze > Ubuntu/Mint (at least for me)

Tried 10.04 the other day. DVD drive would not mount under any circumstance, even though udev created a node for the drive.
Checked the drive using hdparm and everything looked fine. Even tried multiple discs to no avail. Debian has never failed me.

z0oT

Naikon wrote: »

Debian Lenny/Squeeze > Ubuntu/Mint (at least for me)

Tried 10.04 the other day. DVD drive would not mount under any circumstance, even though udev created a node for the drive.
Checked the drive using hdparm and everything looked fine. Even tried multiple discs to no avail. Debian has never failed me.

I concur, I find Debian a lot more stable and trouble free in comparison to Ubuntu. The keyboard didn't work for me when I gave 10.04 a shot, and I had to compile either the kernel or alsa myself on the previous two releases.

Naikon

z0oT wrote: »

I concur, I find Debian a lot more stable and trouble free in comparison to Ubuntu. The keyboard didn't work for me when I gave 10.04 a shot, and I had to compile either the kernel or alsa myself on the previous two releases.

Yeah, I like alot more(probably my most used distro). Ubuntu is moving in the right direction of supporting new users though. The Debian community can be
a bit vocal when it comes to new users asking questions(Even worse in the FreeBSD community). It's a like a food chain or something. Ask an OpenBSD user
about his opinion of Linux:pac:

About your keyboard not working, ususally it's something to do with the HAL module which gives easier hotplugging support to the X Window system.
The pain about it though, is that it tends to freeze input devices unless you add "AllowEmptyInput" "false" under the options section in your xorg.conf file.

z0oT

Naikon wrote: »

About your keyboard not working, ususally it's something to do with the HAL module which gives easier hotplugging support to the X Window system.
The pain about it though, is that it tends to freeze input devices unless you add "AllowEmptyInput" "false" under the options section in your xorg.conf file.

Yeah, but it really isn't stuff I should have to fix in a so-called "User Friendly" distro.

Also do you know what the situation with the feature freeze in Debian is? Late June was the date that was quoted, but I haven't heard anything since.

ShooterSF

My DHCP seems to spaz out too every so often on Ubuntu and I have to open a terminal and type "sudo dhclient" which seems to fix it.

Naikon

z0oT wrote: »

Yeah, but it really isn't stuff I should have to fix in a so-called "User Friendly" distro.

Also do you know what the situation with the feature freeze in Debian is? Late June was the date that was quoted, but I haven't heard anything since.

Not really sure to be honest. Soon is what I take from the situation.

Naikon

ShooterSF wrote: »

My DHCP seems to spaz out too every so often on Ubuntu and I have to open a terminal and type "sudo dhclient" which seems to fix it.

You could set it manually so you don't have to keep using dhclient.

ShooterSF

Naikon wrote: »

You could set it manually so you don't have to keep using dhclient.

Sometimes Im a right dunce about obvious solutions Thanks!