[SOLVED] Wifi disconnects 10 mins, Toshiba/Netgear

[nathanjh13]

I've sold a Toshiba NB500 and the new user is losing wifi connectivity every ten minutes, it then spends a minute thinking about it then reconnects, only for the cycle to repeat ad nauseum.

It's Mint 11 by the way.

I had no probs with it at all (it's a Broadcom adapter inside that I configured with help from the wifi compat site).

The user has a Netgear router and all of the other machines using the same router run Windows and don't lose connectivity at all (essentially, the router is fine).

Here is the readout from iwconfig:

lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off

Any help would be fantastic here, I know this is a fairly frequent occurrence but I can't find anything involving Netgear routers just Atheros etc.
Many thanks


PS I'm told it loses connection even when the signal strength bars are there.

[remoulder]

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=1085

[AlbertP]

Please tell us what Broadcom chip you use. The output of sudo mintwifi or inxi -N is very useful in this case. Which driver or firmware you need is different for every Broadcom chip.

With "wifi compat site" you mean you installed compat-wireless from LinuxWireless.org? Nothing wrong with that, by the way, if it fixes your wifi.

[nathanjh13]

Thanks Remoulder I'll pass it on and paste the results (I no longer have the netbook so I'm diagnosing second hand myself), I'll perhaps suggest the user registers here in future to make it swifter for him all things considered.

But in the meantime yes, I installed compat-wireless from LinuxWireless.org and it fixed it perfectly, the adapter connects etc even for the new owner but it just drops out (very consistently, like clockwork it seems). I'll get him to use sudo mintwifi (sudo /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintWifi/mintWifi.py) and post the results.

Thanks a million guys, bear with me.

[nathanjh13]

Thanks again:

SUDO, MINTWIFI:

-------------------------
* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
-- Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter (rev 01)
==> PCI ID = 10ec:8176 (rev 01)
-------------------------
* II. querying ndiswrapper...
-------------------------
* III. querying iwconfig...
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"SKY96191"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:1F:33:4F:6A:96
Bit Rate=5.5 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-26 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

-------------------------
* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 1c:75:08:8b:62:f6
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:43 Base address:0x8000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:64 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:64 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:4416 (4.4 KB) TX bytes:4416 (4.4 KB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 1c:65:9d:ba:83:54
inet addr:192.168.0.4 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::1e65:9dff:feba:8354/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:86 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:151 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:52296 (52.2 KB) TX bytes:22704 (22.7 KB)

-------------------------
* V. querying DHCP...
-------------------------
* VI. querying nslookup google.com...
Server: 192.168.0.1
Address: 192.168.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.78
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.64
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.65
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.66
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.67
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.68
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.69
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.70
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.71
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.72
Name: google.com
Address: 173.194.41.73


Many thanks, hope it helps
Nath

[AlbertP]

This isn't Broadcom at all. It's a Realtek 8188CE.
Realtek's website only offers a driver for old Linux versions. But perhaps you can upgrade the driver with compat-wireless
From there you can click compat-wireless.tar.bz2 to download. Please unpack the file (just double-click it to open the archiver), it's a kind of ZIP file for Linux.
After extracting the file's contents, go to the folder where you extracted it and right-click > open in terminal. In that terminal you can install the newer wifi driver with these commands:

Code: Select all

./scripts/driver-select rtlwifi
make
sudo make install

[nathanjh13]

Yes it's not Bromcom it's realtek, I couldn't remember but it's a moot point as this is what I did from compat-wirelss in the first place to get it working for me (it worked perfectly).

It "works" for the new user too, but it disconnects and reconnects itself straight away on a 10 minute cycle. He surfs away no prob then he loses connectivity only for it to reconnect. Strange I know.

A re-install would/should work?

Thanks
nath

PS Thanks for your straightforward sensible post though.

EDIT: I'll shut up and get him to try an reinstall/update as suggested.

[nathanjh13]

On the stable release page:

http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/users/Download/stable/

Should he get the "latest" release 3.3 or the 2.6

I think 2.6 for Mint 11?

Yes, there's an element of the blind leading the blind here, bear with me.

[AlbertP]

The compat-wireless with a version number are: wifi drivers from kernel X in a package that can be installed on older kernels. So make sure the version of the compat-wireless is newer than your kernel (Mint 11 has 2.6.38), compat-wireless 3.3 for example.
I suppose you used 2.6.38 the previous time?

You can also use the bleeding edge compat-wireless from http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/users/D ... he_tarball as the stable one apparently didn't yet work fully for you.
That package also contains the latest development work that hasn't yet reached any kernel version.

[nathanjh13]

Thanks a million I'll pass that on!
Nath

EDIT: Worked a treat. Much obliged.