Wireless Works -- Opps -- Does Not Work

[bubber]

Some times I log onto Mint Debian 64 and my wireless does not work. I see the following:

thomas@ajax-debian ~ $ sudo iwconfig
wlan0 Ralink STA ESSID:"" Nickname:"RT2870STA"
Mode:Auto Frequency=2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Link Quality=10/100 Signal level:0 dBm Noise level:-115 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Other times, with no change to the system (by me anyway), the wireless works great and I see this:

thomas@ajax-debian ~ $ sudo iwconfig
wlan0 Ralink STA ESSID:"Stargate" Nickname:"RT2870STA"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Access Point: 68:7F:74:A1:66:14
Bit Rate=24 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:9974-51ED-E962-8FEC-0BCF-F8CA-B730-082A
Link Quality=83/100 Signal level:-81 dBm Noise level:-83 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Can someone suggest how to make the wireless work great all of the time? Thanks.

Tom

[richyrich]

Change the channel that your wireless router is using. Try channel 2 or 3

[det4100]

A wireless mouse or keyboard can also cause intermittent problems with wireless connections when the signal strength from the router is weak due to distance or obstructions.

[bubber]

Fixing the channel does not seem to have an effect. I have a hardwired mouse and keyboard and the signal from the router is deafening. This is a triple-boot computer: Windows 7 Pro 64, Ubuntu Natty 64, and Linux Mint Debian 64. Windows wireless works flawlessly whereas Natty and Mint have the same intermittent "here - not here" wireless problem. This makes me think that I am dealing with a linux problem and not a router problem. The router is a Linksys E2000.

Tom

[bubber]

OK, I waited until the wireless did not work. While the computer was running, I opened the box and unplugged the wireless card, which is some sort of USB device that sits inside the box near the front grill. After plugging the device back in everything worked fine. Is there a way to do something like this via commands from the terminal?

Tom

[TBABill]

Have you blacklisted the rt2800pci, rt2800usb, rt2x00, etc? Those can conflict with your 2870sta driver and usually need to be blacklisted in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

[bubber]

I was unaware that I needed to do that. Thanks for the tip. I blacklisted the rt2800usb, but the wireless is currently working so I have to go though a few reboots to see if that fixes the problem for good.

Tom

[TBABill]

May also help to add this to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Code: Select all

blacklist rt2800pci
blacklist rt2800usb
blacklist rt2x00lib
blacklist rt2x00pci
blacklist rt2x00usb

[bubber]

I blacklisted all 5 drivers. Things worked great but the problem reappeared again. The only way to get the wireless to work is to shut down the computer completely and restart it (a reboot won't work) or pull the plug on the device and plug it back in. This smells like a hardware issue but the device works fine on Windows 7. Is there a way to "reboot" the wireless device from the command line?

Tom

[DrHu]

This smells like a hardware issue but the device works fine on Windows 7. Is there a way to "reboot" the wireless device from the command line?

Actually to me, it smells like a windows OS control issue, not releasing the hardware properly..

Wireless on Linux..
http://www.serc.iisc.ernet.in/userinfo/wlan.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_tools_for_Linux


.."reboot" the wireless device from the command line?
http://www.dotkam.com/2008/09/29/sure-w ... s-network/
using modprobe to kill the network driver module..

[bubber]

Yes DrHu, I believe that you are right. If I boot into LMDE or Natty the wireless works fine. If I boot into Windows 7 and then do a warm restart to get into either linux the wireless does not work. However, none of the procedures in the links you gave seem to be able to revive the wireless in linux once it goes to lunch. If I get something to work from the command line I will report back. Thanks.

Tom