Network freezes

[zvichi]

I'm new to this forum, to Linux and to Linux Mint and so hoping that I'm posting this question in the right way and place.
I'm experiencing frequent network problems where all network activity will cease. Firefox will become unresponsive, and I'll lose all other network connections, such as access to the Samba-shared folders that I use with VirtualBox. When this happens, I'm not even able to shut down properly, and I have to force the computer to shut down and then restart. This happens multiple times a day - sometimes after only a few minutes of network activity. I'm using the main version of Helena. Help?

[Husse]

Hmm - no good but it does not ring a bell
More facts are needed
- please read these simple rules
And please explain your network setup

[zvichi]

Hopefully I'm posting this correctly - here is the result when I run lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G86 [GeForce 8400M GS] (rev a1)
06:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
09:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
09:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
09:04.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)

... and lspci -vvnn (I think I'm taking the appropriate section here, but not certain):

06:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection [8086:4229] (rev 61)
Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1100]
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 30
Region 0: Memory at f8000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: iwlagn
Kernel modules: iwlagn

I'm using a Sony laptop, and I'm connecting wirelessly to my home network, which just consists of a router and a cable modem - though the problem occurs on other networks when I'm out of the house, too. There are a couple of other problems I'm having, which might be related. First, Internet pages load very slowly. Second, I'm unable to connect through a proxy at work even after I change connection settings in both "Network Proxy" and Firefox and even though I can do it if I open VirtualBox and connect with IE in XP running as a client (though also very slow). Again - not sure if that's related. Besides using the network to go online and get updates, I use Samba to share folders through VirtualBox and I have a couple of Google Gadgets running - checking email and my calendar (possible culprit?).

[Husse]

I think I have sen this problem before and solved it
I have to look through my posts and try to find the earlier posts

[Husse]

There has been a problem with the iwlagn driver but that should be fixed in the present kernels (for Gloria and Helena)
You could try to compile a new driver - not difficult
1 Download the latest compat-wireless from here
2 Extract - double click and then select extract
3 Open a terminal in the extracted folder (right click)
4 In the terminal run the following (one at a time)
make
sudo make install
5 If that does not help or you want to get rid of it anyway just
sudo make uninstall
in the same folder
This is explained in the read me in the archive

[zvichi]

Thanks for the response! I'm game to try - though when I attempt to 'make' I get this error:

make: execvp: ./scripts/check_config.sh: Permission denied
make: *** [.compat_autoconf_master-2009-11-19-3-gac8493d] Error 127

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[Husse]

It could be that you should be root - i.e. use sudo but the readme did have a sudo for make install and not for make
It can also be that you have not installed build-essential

Code: Select all

apt install build-essential

I should have mentioned that you need to do that, it's easy to forget and I think some distros have it installed by default

[zvichi]

Rats. I'm still getting the same error message that I posted above - after installing build-essential and after trying 'sudo make'. Maybe this problem is deeper than I thought.

[Husse]

I have a "spare Helena" installed in this computer - it's not to be used really
I tried make and sudo make install and it worked with some errors, but most modules were installed I think - can't test
Did you extract to your home folder?
If not I understand the error

These were the errors I got

Code: Select all

With make
/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwl-5000.c: In function ‘iwl5000_gain_computation’:
/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwl-5000.c:186: warning: comparison of distinct pointer types lacks a cast


/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187_leds.c: In function ‘rtl8187_unregister_led’:
/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187_leds.c:170: error: implicit declaration of function ‘flush_delayed_work’
make[4]: *** [/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187_leds.o] Error 1
make[3]: *** [/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x] Error 2
make[2]: *** [/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless] Error 2
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-14-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
-----------------------
With sudo make install

WARNING: -e needs -E or -F

Stopped at
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-14-generic'
after a long time

CC [M]  /home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187_leds.o
/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187_leds.c: In function ‘rtl8187_unregister_led’:
/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187_leds.c:170: error: implicit declaration of function ‘flush_delayed_work’
make[4]: *** [/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187_leds.o] Error 1
make[3]: *** [/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x] Error 2
make[2]: *** [/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11/drivers/net/wireless] Error 2
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/husse/Desktop/compat-wireless-2009-12-11] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-14-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2




[zvichi]

I really do appreciate your efforts to help - thanks. Unfortunately... yes, I extracted to my home folder. I'm just not able to get past these error messages, and my network is freezing a lot. It kills me too, because I never had problems with wireless in Vista before I switched over.

[Husse]

Will come back to you shortly
To be on the safe side- make another download and try again, might be a bad download
The compiling here is really simple if it works, about as complicated (or less) than installing something in Windows, but it took quite a while to complete

[Husse]

I've read this again and I'm sad to say I don't see a way out
As I wrote it could be a bad download - did you check the md5sum? I forgot to mention that before

[Chasester]

Actually I'm getting the same exact error when trying to make the compat.

I may have to go back to Mint 7 myself. Not sure how to troubleshoot the random slowness. It's almost like dropping packets.

[zvichi]

I did check the download as you had suggested, and I got the same error again. I'm sorry to sound foolish, but what do you mean by checking the md5sum?

[Chasester]

I believe the Compat uses a SHA1SUM file instead of MD5sum.

Basically in terminal in the directory of the file you type sha1sum <filename> which will generate a long hexadecimal string that you then check that to the sum Compat says is good.

Here's a decent write-up on it.

http://g33kgrrl.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/verify-the-integrity-of-an-iso-or-burned-cd/

[Husse]

I was actually thinking of Mint, but the driver download could be bad too
In Mint you can just right click the ISO > md5sum
md5 and SHA are two ways to create a control sum of a file
If the control sum you see on the download page and the one you calculate are identical it's utterly unlikely the files differ
I've seen several cases where a working system with problems are found to be built from an ISO with md5sum errors
After all it might just be the networking part that is corrupt

[zvichi]

Thanks for the explanation and the link - it makes sense now, though my downloads seem fine. Sigh.

Perhaps I should just accept that Linux (or Ubuntu/Mint, anyway) and my laptop are just a bad match - but if there's any point in continuing the thread, there is one other thing that confused me and that may be related, so I'll go ahead and throw it out there. I mentioned earlier that I'm also unable to connect to my work network through a proxy unless I use Windows as a virtual machine, but... before I installed Mint, I tested a Live CD of it at work, and it connected just fine. It wasn't until I actually installed and updated everything that I lost the ability to connect. Is there possibly a clue in there??

[Husse]

Possible clue - yes
If you updated through mintUpdate it has a history (in the view menu I think)
Take a look and see if there's anything network related
You can then use Synaptic to force the older version (you find that in the Package menu I think, look around)

[zvichi]

I did look in the history of updates, and I'm pretty sure there's something meaningful for me in there, but I'm not clear on what most of the items are (except for the ones that are obvious) - so I'm not sure how to pin down ones that could be related to my problem.

But... there's another update here, too - and I'd be interested in any thoughts. I poked around these forums some more and found a post about system freezes (viewtopic.php?f=18&t=37971) - the symptoms didn't exactly match mine, since the freezes I'm experiencing only effect network activity, but I went ahead and installed the updated kernel mentioned there, anyway. Three days later and no frozen network. Firefox (and even Google Gadgets) is generally more responsive now, too, so I'm hopeful.

Even with this new kernel, though, I'm still unable to connect to a proxy server at work. Now I'm thinking that these two issues are unrelated, and so perhaps I should start a new thread about connecting to a proxy server?

[Husse]

so perhaps I should start a new thread about connecting to a proxy server?

Yes, please