Linux Mint Forums

Greetings,

I have an issue with my WiFi while at work. This laptop works 100% correctly while at home on my WPA2 Personal encrypted WiFi. Work has a guest WiFi for visitors and personal computers. It is WPA2 Personal encrypted using DHCP. The laptop connects just fine and I can see the network and I can even browse any shares from other computers on the guest network. However, I cannot route out to the Internet to save my life. The main IT guy doesn't know what the issue is (I'm IT but I'm working on a different contract for the company). According to him the guest WiFi isn't blocking anything.

The laptop is a Samsung running an AMD A6-3400M fusion chip. I am running Mint 12 KDE. Below is the mintWiFi.py output. When the script queries the DHCP server it breaks something because nslookup stops working after I run mintWiFi.py. So nslookup does actually function. Again I just can't route anywhere. I haven't made any modifications to anything. So I'm at a loss now. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

jason@jason-dev ~ $ sudo /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintWifi/mintWifi.py
-------------------------
* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
-- Atheros Communications Inc. AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
==> PCI ID = 168c:0032 (rev 01)
-------------------------
* II. querying ndiswrapper...
-------------------------
* III. querying iwconfig...
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"pi-guest"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:09:0F:E8:A9:C9
Bit Rate=65 Mb/s Tx-Power=16 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=45/70 Signal level=-65 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:194 Missed beacon:0

-------------------------
* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr e8:03:9a:11:a2:cf
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:41 Base address:0xc000

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:42 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:42 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:3249 (3.2 KB) TX bytes:3249 (3.2 KB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr e8:11:32:e5:ed:bf
inet addr:192.168.111.115 Bcast:192.168.111.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::ea11:32ff:fee5:edbf/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2338 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:203 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:284786 (284.7 KB) TX bytes:27081 (27.0 KB)

-------------------------
* V. querying DHCP...
Rather than invoking init scripts through /etc/init.d, use the service(8)
utility, e.g. service smbd reload

Since the script you are attempting to invoke has been converted to an
Upstart job, you may also use the reload(8) utility, e.g. reload smbd
-------------------------
* VI. querying nslookup google.com...
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

It sounds like the router is not providing DNS servers. If you enter this command:
cat /etc/resolv.conf

it should show two lines which begin, "nameserver".

The file is built dynamically at DHCP logon. You should be able to see the difference between locations where the Internet works, and where it doesn't.

Thanks for the advice, but sadly it isn't that.

I'm 100% certain now that the issue is either the default driver in the current Ubuntu and Mint builds or something in the 3.0.x kernels in those distros that causes the grief. I switched to Arch Linux last night and while I don't have a DE up and running yet, the rest of the laptop is fully functional including WiFi here at work. I haven't tried to track down the driver versions between Mint and Arch to see if there's a difference, but I do know that I'm on on the 3.2.8 kernel right now. Once I get everything working again I'll probably dig deeper in order to try to figure out what is actually causing the issue for future reference.

This is something new that has caught my attention, I didn't know that the drivers of Arch and Mint will be so different. I am not sure about what the problem could have been in this case trying to connect with the WiFi.

I am having same problem. I have come across many threads with similar situation.

So, are problems not solved in the linux mint community?! Everywhere I go there is an unsolved problem

My problem got solved . I guess I won't be ditching mint soon after all.

This could also be because your laptop is currently not plugged in with power supply and so the power management on mint screws up your wireless connection by disabling somethings.
The following thread viewtopic.php?f=53&t=111658 pointed me to http://uselessuseofcat.com/?p=67 which solved the problem for me.