Linux Mint 9 Fluxbox - wifi problem - Thinkpad T41

[selene]

Hi !

I' ve a recurrent problem with my mint 9 fluxbox. It looks like it appears randomly when using the wireless connection ( never happened with ethernet cable). The screen turn black, the mouse pointer is still displayed usualy, and the caps lock LED is blinking (I search the web for these symptoms, it would be a kernel panic or kernel crash). For example one time, it happened just after I was online and on was going to launch xchat with the menu :p , sometimes it doesn't happen, even after many and many hours.

It may not be an hardware problem, as win xp works fine, and i didn't have this problem with mint 8 gnome and opensuse 11.3 lxde.

I' m sorry. I' m not really confortable with linux yet.

Btw this distro works incredibly well, and out of the box .

Thanks for all.

[Oscar799]

Moved here from Networking>Wireless

[selene]

I' m not using ndiswrapper.

Here are the wifi chip's info:

Chipset: Atheros AR5004X
Radio Chip: Atheros AR5112
MAC Processor: Atheros AR5213
IEEE Standards: 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g
PCI ID: 168c:1014

[vrkalak]

You're using Mint-9 Fluxbox . . . so am I. Is becoming a Fluxbox-Guru

Does the screen actually turn 'black' or a dark gray?
The dark-gray background is the base default background for Fluxbox; when the wallpaper-setter 'fails' it reverts to the default background.
If it is turning a dark-gray then, the problem is the Fluxbox wallpaper setter > fb-wpsetter

I have problems with using "Feh" to set the backgrounds in Fluxbox.

I installed Nitrogen, to handle the wallpaper/background for my Mint-9 Fluxbox.
Nitrogen is straight forward and easy to configure (if you have used Openbox you know what I mean)

Maybe or maybe not ... this might be part of the problem you are experiencing?

[Mizh]

Hi !

I' ve a recurrent problem with my mint 9 fluxbox. It looks like it appears randomly when using the wireless connection ( never happened with ethernet cable). The screen turn black, the mouse pointer is still displayed usualy, and the caps lock LED is blinking (I search the web for these symptoms, it would be a kernel panic or kernel crash). For example one time, it happened just after I was online and on was going to launch xchat with the menu :p , sometimes it doesn't happen, even after many and many hours.

It may not be an hardware problem, as win xp works fine, and i didn't have this problem with mint 8 gnome and opensuse 11.3 lxde.

I' m sorry. I' m not really confortable with linux yet.

Btw this distro works incredibly well, and out of the box .

Thanks for all.

I experienced something very similar to this twice, earlier today when I was at my university. I was logged on to the university network while doing some exercises when the screen suddenly freezed and the CAPS Lock LED and some other LED started to blink. I just shrugged, thinking that I might just have installed something wrong or something, and then booted into windows and continued working without getting interrupted.

I (sadly) also have an Atheros wifi chip, and I believe that is where the problem lies, as both me and a buddy at university with similar chip have had a lot of bad experiences with connecting our laptops to the university network, no-matter if we were using linux or windows.
My connection is always fine when I'm at home, connected to my private wifi router, and as I'm writing this (from my home) my laptop has been running for more than 2 hours in LM fluxbox 9 without any problems at all and with excellent connection.
I have for a long time speculated, because of my experiences, that Atheros chips are particular bad at doing some specific sorts of encryption which then cause them to malfunction or just work poorly when they have to do this kind of encryption.

My wifi chip is a Atheros AR928X, and as said earlier I've had problems in general with this wifi chip in both linux and windows, but only when connected to the university network. (next time I buy a laptop I'm gonna make sure that it doesn't have an Atheros wifi chip before I buy!)

[selene]

You're using Mint-9 Fluxbox . . . so am I. Is becoming a Fluxbox-Guru

Does the screen actually turn 'black' or a dark gray?
The dark-gray background is the base default background for Fluxbox; when the wallpaper-setter 'fails' it reverts to the default background.
If it is turning a dark-gray then, the problem is the Fluxbox wallpaper setter > fb-wpsetter

I have problems with using "Feh" to set the backgrounds in Fluxbox.

I installed Nitrogen, to handle the wallpaper/background for my Mint-9 Fluxbox.
Nitrogen is straight forward and easy to configure (if you have used Openbox you know what I mean)

Maybe or maybe not ... this might be part of the problem you are experiencing?

Hi Fluxbox_Guru .

The screen turns black.
It may not be the problem, but thanks for the cool tips . (I' ll check if it's really black or grey but it was really dark and black )