[SOLVED] I ran a command and now I have NO wireless

[Ubulindy]

Ive been disconnecting repeatedly lately with wireless. Athk9 (atheros). It asks for auth over and over. In my quest to solve this, I found a thread and ran the command:

sudo sh -c 'echo "options ath9k nohwcrypt" > /etc/modprobe.d/custom-wireless.conf

Now I have NO wireless at all. How do I reverse that command and get my wireless back?

EDIT (Solved) : I went into /ect/modprobe.d and simply removed the custom config to athk9 \o/
Note: This however did not solve the issue of wireless disconnecting and asking for auth over and over.

I have read these same bug reports going back a few distros... Oneric and Mint 11. Extremely pleased with LMDE, but this has been a thorn in my side. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

System: Host: censored Kernel: 3.11-2-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Cinnamon 2.0.14 Distro: LinuxMint 1 debian
Machine: Mobo: Micro-Star model: MS-16F4 version: REV:0.C Bios: American Megatrends version: E16F4IMS.50H date: 09/12/2013
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i7-4700MQ CPU (-HT-MCP-) cache: 6144 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx)
Clock Speeds: 1: 800.00 MHz 2: 800.00 MHz 3: 800.00 MHz 4: 800.00 MHz 5: 2401.00 MHz 6: 800.00 MHz 7: 800.00 MHz 8: 800.00 MHz
Graphics: Card-1: Intel 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller
Card-2: NVIDIA GK106M [GeForce GTX 770M]
X.Org: 1.14.3 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1920x1080@59.9hz
GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Haswell Mobile GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 9.2.2
Audio: Card: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.11-2-amd64
Network: Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR9462 Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath9k
IF: wlan0 state: up mac: XXXXXXXXX
Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2200 Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: alx
IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: XXXXXXXXX
Card-3: Atheros
IF: N/A state: N/A speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: N/A
Drives: HDD Total Size: 1000.2GB (0.9% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: WDC_WD10JPVX size: 1000.2GB
Partition: ID: / size: 322G used: 8.6G (3%) fs: ext4
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 46.0C mobo: 29.8C
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 196 Uptime: 11 min Memory: 652.8/7891.9MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 1.9.14

[PatH57]

Hi,

let's have a look.

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wget -N -t 5 -T 10 http://dl.dropbox.com/u/57264241/wireless_script && \chmod +x wireless_script && \./wireless_script

It will download a script and create a file named wireless-info.txt or wireless-info.tar.gz in your home folder with wireless information so we can see the condition of your wireless at the time. The MAC address, WPA key and WEP key are removed for your security. Paste contents of the wireless-info.txt or wireless-info.tar.gz file at http://pastebin.ubuntu.com or alternatively http://pastebin.com/ then post the link here in your question.
In the meantime take a look at this (Ubuntu 14.04 and Mint 17 enforce a lot more correct settings on wifi drivers)
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=175809

[Ubulindy]

Thank you so much for the help. Here is the pastebin to your wget download: http://pastebin.com/QRAEiq9U

Also, I use DD-WRT ( Buffalo Router and NEVER drops), and I see no where to change country code.

My router is set to G only. ( it has no N but works perfectly). Security is WPA2 Personal. Not mixed. Using AES. I dont know what has happened but I am only getting 1 MB, not the standard 54. In the time it took to just type this out, Network Manager has asked for auth 6 times.

WMM is enabled.

Chanel is set to 13 ( I am in the US, although my VPN is in NL) I've tried them all.

"if it says 00, it's not set and you should set it.Verify the code for your country:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2
and use:
Code: Select all
iw reg set FR "

Mine IS set to 00, and I see no where in my router to set that. Also on that wiki link ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 ) this is all I see for US: US United States 1974 .us ISO 3166-2:US. Actually, I don't even understand any of that. Where do I set that and how? I have never had to set that in all my time of using Linux.
$ sudo iw reg get
country 00:
(2402 - 2472 @ 40), (3, 20)
(2457 - 2482 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
(2474 - 2494 @ 20), (3, 20), NO-OFDM, PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
(5170 - 5250 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
(5735 - 5835 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS


If this helps, it seems this started happening when I had booted into Windows 8 to grab updates. When I booted back into LMDE, I noticed my bluetooth applet was gone. I did everything I could. Everything was greyed out. I booted back into Windows, and was unable to enable it there as well. On a hunch I went into my BIOS, where I switched the order of the boots. "Network" had been moved to the bottom so I could change boot options. Going by memory I think the order is now CD/DVD, HDD, Network, USB CD/DVD, and I cant recall the last one. So, like I said, on a hunch I thought, "hmm, maybe having the Network on the bottom order is making something timeout of sorts and not load on boot", so I moved it into 3rd place. I then switched back to UEFI, booted into Windows 8, and now the bluetooth was enabled. I went back into the BIOS, switched to "Legacy", booted back into LMDE and voila, the bluetooth applet was in the systray again and enabled. But something has gone awry. I was once able to connect to bluetooth with my phone, and now even though it is enabled, it also will not connect. As we speak my network name is not even showing in the network manager. It again disconnected and hasn't even asked me for auth. I'm completely stumped and fear I'll be forced to do a fresh install. Ive been working on this for up to 15 hours straight per day. Any further help would be appreciated. Brand new MSI GT 60 Laptop and everything was working like a charm right out of the box. So aggravating. Thanks!

[PatH57]

something is wrong

wlan0: disabling HT/VHT due to WEP/TKIP use

so you are using wpa not wpa2
check the router again (Babushka)
the region has to be set on your wifi card using

Code: Select all

sudo iw reg set US

[Ubulindy]

Hi, ok, as soon as you said that I'm using WPA I went o-o, because I've never used WPA. I checked. According to my router Im using WPA2 Personal and AES. Here's a screen.
http://i58.tinypic.com/a57v6d.png

Also, I set the code using the command: sudo iw reg set US

This is what I get still: sudo iw reg get
[sudo] password for xxxxx
country 00:
(2402 - 2472 @ 40), (3, 20)
(2457 - 2482 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
(2474 - 2494 @ 20), (3, 20), NO-OFDM, PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
(5170 - 5250 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
(5735 - 5835 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS

EDIT ( addtnl info) I just did command:
sudo iw reg set US ...... again;
Output is: $ sudo iw reg get
country US:
(2402 - 2472 @ 40), (3, 27)
(5170 - 5250 @ 40), (3, 17)
(5250 - 5330 @ 40), (3, 20), DFS
(5490 - 5600 @ 40), (3, 20), DFS
(5650 - 5710 @ 40), (3, 20), DFS
(5735 - 5835 @ 40), (3, 30)
(57240 - 63720 @ 2160), (N/A, 40)

It seems to be not persisting over reboot. I rebooted and it is gone again.


Something weird definitely going on. Wireless shows an excellent signal strength, but 1 Mb link speed. If I disconnect my eth0 cable, wireless will not connect period. When I plug my cat5 cable back in (eth0), I have no connection at all. Nothing on eth0. Then for some reason after I do that, it takes a reboot of both the internet modem and my router to even be able to log back into the router. That has never happened before. Cant login to router 192.168.1.1 or internet modem 192.168.0.1. I'm going crazy trying to figure this out. Wireless is still dropping like crazy and as we speak I'm not connected again. I'll also add I did a hard restore of the router even. redid all the settings. This doesn't make sense.

[PatH57]

do you have other units connected to the router? are they ok?
you could have a hw failure on the laptop, it does happen (especially if windows also went ballistic) Also is the bios up to date? your machine is pretty new
,did you install Mint or was it pre-installed? (it's not the first GT 60 I troubleshoot but none presented this kind of behaviour)

[Ubulindy]

Yes, I have a friend that comes over and she connects up no problem. Never drops. When I boot into windows, all is fine. Connection does not drop. BIOS is up to date. Yes I installed LMDE. What do you suggest that I do at this point? Maybe a fresh install? See if it persists when fresh? If it were behaving this way over in Windows still Id send it back, I have a 3 yr. warranty, but it doesn't.

UPDATE: As I was waiting for you to return an answer I took the opportunity to boot back over to Windows. Everything works perfect. I unplugged eth0 cable and wireless was fast and zippy. Signal strength: Excellent Link Speed: 54MB. Was as fast as if I was wired. Funny thing is, my bluetooth immediately disabled as soon as I booted in. The button is greyed out and it will not enable. The applet in LMDE is now gone as well. All buttons on this side are now greyed out. When I booted into this side, wireless would not connect up, I had to click on my network name, and at first I had 48 MB link speed. It immediately dropped to 1 MB again. Can not connect to anything using wireless. When I unplugged the eth0 cable, and plugged it back in to my laptop, eth0 would not connect again, same as before. This all seems to point to trouble with network manger if you ask me, and all of this is a long standing bug(s) not only with LMDE, but Mint (main) and Ubuntu. Network manager has always had problems if you ask me. Even the way it negotiates "secrets" for keys and certs with VPNs ect. Just seems to move from distro to distro. Ive used almost all of them now. Ive done a lot of distro hopping. This type of issue goes back as far as I can remember, and I started using Ubuntu on 4.10... Warty Warthog. lol. Back then you were lucky to even have wireless. My point is I think, what good is a mobile laptop with no wireless and persistent wireless issues. Atheros, Broadcom Ive had problems with both. And the network manger nor wicd is good at negotiating auth. I applaud all the work that goes into these distros, all the coding. But Linux will never make it into major mainstream when the simplest of things continue to fail. Things continue to be polished, more eye candy, improvements here and there but some of these bugs just don't go away. This clearly is not a driver issue in my opinion, its a network manager issue. Ive heard it a thousand times at least, as I'm sure you have as well. Guess Im looking at a fresh install. I was hoping to at least wait til November when we move to "stable". I dont see how that will be possible now. What are your thoughts? And again, thank you once more for all your time and trouble helping me. I really appreciate it.

[PatH57]

LMDE is rolling so you have a lot of gimmicks but kernel is not the best, my humble opinion off course.
The problems seems to come with the cohabitation wifi, bluethoot witch is frequent on Atheros card using ATH9K
The simple trick is to blacklist msi_wmi (it makes double usage anyway)
That said off course proprietary drivers have a real advantage when they exist, else we have to do reverse engineering to get some features working.
Network-manager does a good job never had to use wicd (also I do like the GUI and the ease of use)
Being also I network consultant I see as many network problems on windows or linux, off course when the problem does happen one feels always unique but in average the % of problems is the same.
Ubuntu 14.04, LMDE or Mint 17 are still a bit new and a lot of people are reluctant to update kernel (windows does it also, an update is always part of most service packs it's just not called kernel and people don't realize that they do)

[Ubulindy]

sudo rfkill list
[sudo] password for XXXXXX:
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no

How do I blacklist that? Is this correct?
sudo su
echo "blacklist msi-wmi" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Is that correct? And what exactly will that accomplish? Interestingly enough, now that bluetooth has been begrudgingly disabled again on both sides, I haven't disconnected yet in LMDE (yet), but link speed is still only 1 MB. Im guessing that if I were to pull the eth0 cable, I'll have no connection again.

EDIT: I just looked in /ect/modprobe.d I have no ect/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
I have:
alsa-base.config
alsa-base-blacklist.config
ath9k.config
bumblebee.config
dkms.config
fbdev-blacklist.config
oss-compat.config

The only thing is ath9k.config is: options ath9k nohwcrypt=1

[PatH57]

before you blacklist have you done all available updates?

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sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install wireless-tools

[Ubulindy]

Yes, I just did. Nothing to update or install. Wireless has not dropped yet or asked for auth yet. NM still gives link speed of 1 MB though. In the router it reports 54 MB, so Im wondering what exactly blacklisting would accomplish? Will it help the speed any? And is that the correct command? Remember, I have no ect/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf. So, where would it even go? Thanks

UPDATE: hmpft, lo and behold Im on wireless as we speak. I couldn't go to bed after 15 more hours of this without one more time pulling the eth0 cable. Full speed at 54 MB, both in the router and network manager. I called my friend and told her " Pennie remember what I told you to do when you boot over into windows, and when you come back to LMDE you'll have bluetooth? Don't do it!" lol, I woke her up to tell her. Oh happy days are here again \o/ Screw_you_bluetooth Anyways, you've been so helpful and Im tired, but I love you right now, heheh. Respectfully of course. Have a great day PatH57, and if you ever need help with anything I'll try my best. Shoot me a PM. Thanks This made my day.

[PatH57]

so the story is don't boot windows just joking
Glitches do happen but one more thing I would recommend is to check if windows and Mint use the same IP, in this case the router may get a bit funky. (assign a static IP to Mint and windows, you probably have enough of them anyway )
Enjoy the rest of your week end.
Pat

[Ubulindy]

Hi, its me again. I just rebooted my machine and its doing it all over again. This time the bluetooth light on the laptop isn't even on, but the applet is showing in the systray as on and enabled. NM is asking for auth again and again. Link speed 1 MB and a total repeat of yesterday. I was going to uninstall bluetooth, but it also wants to uninstall Cinnamon. How do I go about blacklisting the atheros for the bluetooth like we discussed? I need the command please. And remember, look at my previous post to you and you'll see what I have under /ect/modprobe.d. I may need to create the blackilst config? Thanks.

UPDATE: I just booted into the dreaded windows. By the way the only reason I kept that on there is in case I needed to send it back they will not accept it if the original OS is not present Bluetooth on the windows side is once again OFF. Button is greyed out again, and it would not allow me to enable it. I went into the SCM panel for MSI, and it would not turn on/enable there either.
I booted back into LMDE and the bluetooth applet is once again gone and wireless is acting as expected and at link speed of 54 MB. I definitely need to blacklist that thing. Oivey.

UPDATE: I just made a text file inside /ect/modprobe.d and created a file blacklist.conf
Here are the screens... is this correct?
http://i61.tinypic.com/2q06kjk.png
http://i59.tinypic.com/fup9pi.png

Thanks for your help!

[PatH57]

looks ok

[Ubulindy]

Well, so far so good, I crossed my fingers and rebooted, bluetooth didn't come up, and my wireless is acting as it should. Ive already anticipated a fresh install, burned the ISO already and backed everything up just in case. As far as I'm concerned this is like putting a bandaide on a crap situation, because now bluetooth doesn't work over in windows but wireless works great. What were they thinking when they made Atheros have dual control over Bluetooth and Wifi? Makes no sense. Thank you so much for all your time and effort. You've been awsum! I'll keep you posted!

[PatH57]

What were they thinking when they made Atheros have dual control

don't ask
what I'm more surprised is that windows has also problems, usually the proprietary drivers do fix this, open source drivers are a bit behind on this especially because the manufacturer doesn't release the source code

[Ubulindy]

Hi PatH57, just wanted to pop in real quick and let you know I'm doing a fresh install. Nothing I'm doing is working.
I did this, and it did'nt work:
sed -e '/exit 0/d' -e '/rfkill block bluetooth/d' /etc/rc.local | sudo tee /etc/rc.local; echo -e "rfkill block bluetooth\nexit 0" | sudo tee -a /etc/rc.local
I then went into BUM ( boot up manager ) I took bluetooth out to not start at boot up. After that eth0 wouldn't even come up.
As we speak, bluetooth applet is sitting there in the systray and even though I disabled it, its nothing but grief. Ill update you after the install

UPDATE: PatH57, I ended up doing a fresh install on both sides.
Did diagnostics, it said there was a problem with bluetooth that could not be fixed.
Used the MSI driver disc that came with the laptop and reinstalled the wifi/bluetooth driver, it completed, and didn't solve a thing.
Used the refresh PC settings within Windows 8, nothing solved.
Can not enable or turn on bluetooth.
Bluetooth now gone from device manager.
Reinstalled Windows 8
Reinstalled LMDE
Bluetooth is currently non existent on the windows side. Wifi stays connected and at full speed of 54 MB.
Bluetooth applet was non existent on LMDE til the 5th boot, and now its here again, however, wifi is not disconnecting, and at full speed of 54MB

I have a support ticket in to MSI and I have a feeling I'll be sending this back. I think it's what you said straight away, hardware failure. I can think of nothing else. Support said it may take up to 48 hours to get back with me. Ugh. I wish this thing didn't even have bluetooth. Unfortunately there is no way to get rid of it because of the shared hardware and driver. Thank you for reading my endless posts about this issue.You've been a great deal of help and it made me feel like I wasn't alone in my turmoil.

UPDATE 2: PatH57, just letting you know I got an RMA#. Have to provide my own shipping box AND pay for shipping back to MSI -.- Not too happy about that but oh well. I also told them I am seeing messages "BIOS is broken" So, it is on the RMA for them to install a new wireless card, and check the BIOS per tech at MSI. Turn around is 25 days after they log it into their system 0o I also told them I will be removing the hdd before sending it back. I am not wiping this hdd yet again. They wanted me to just wipe out the passwords. Nope. I told them to just pop in one of their OEM hdd's and do what they need to do. Now I have to dig out my old 18.4" Toshiba monster. Ugh.