Wireless interface gets shut down

smlgbl · Guru Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 305

Hello,

I don't know why this is happening, but lately i have come across this problem:
After some time of working, my wireless interface just gets shut down. I can't really say if it is always after the same amount of time.
All i get in the logs is this:

mars-red · Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 4:31 am Post subject:

I feel like a huge dope admitting this, but when I was having similar problems it ended up being that I kept hitting the hardware kill switch for my wireless radio by accident. The button is in the worst place on my Sager laptop, so if you lean forward with it in your lap, the button gets pressed without you realizing it.

Eliminate that as a possible cause first, or you will drive yourself nuts (like me). :oops:

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smlgbl · Guru Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 305

Thanks a lot, but it is not a laptop! Normal desktop.
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samuel.
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mars-red · Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 4:28 pm Post subject:

Ah. Nevermind.

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smlgbl · Guru Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 305

I think i solved it.
The connection to my DSL-Router and Wireless-AP Fritx-Box Fon Wlan 7050 seemed to just go down after a while.
So i switched off the option of so-called g++ mode, and it seems to be more stable like that. Will still test and then put __SOLVED__ to the title.
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samuel.
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smlgbl · Guru Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 305

OK, i was wrong, didn't solve it. Still happens. Getting on my nerves now, big time. :evil:

Is there a way of watching the signal strength aso. without constantly looking at my gKrellm?
Pls, any help is appreciated.
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samuel.
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sundialsvc4 · Guru Joined: 10 Nov 2005 Posts: 436

Well, that "terminated on signal 15" message seems strange. That's SIGTERM, and that implies to me some kind of explicit request. Not a hardware or software failure.

The first place I'd look is the "/var/log/everything/current" (or whatever) system log-file to see what is happening just before the connection goes down. It's doubly-odd that dhcpcd is dropping for any reason... it usually stays up the whole time the system's booted.

mars-red · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:09 am Post subject:

haader, if you use KDE there's a little KDE panel applet that you can dock into the taskbar that will give you three small bars that represent the noise level, signal strength, and overall link quality. It' handy to use, because it's easy to interpret and really doesn't take up any space.
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smlgbl · Guru Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 305

Hi guys,

thanks a lot for your help already.
This little handy applet you are talking about is probably equivalent to what i meant with that gKrellm for the wireless card. It shows me these things, but i don't want to be looking at it constantly in 3 hours, so i thought maybe i can have it make a log or something to make sure it is not just the connection that gets dropped. But even then it would be odd for dhcpcd to just shut down.

Basically what happens is the same as when i shut the system down, except that no other process does what dhcpcd does. Before the above excerpt from the log there is nothing that would have a connection to that. Not even time-wise. I mean, the last entry before dhcpcd shutting down is sometimes hours or minutes earlier.

Thanks a lot so far. Any other suggestions are welcome!
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samuel.
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dgaffuri · Advocate Joined: 05 Jun 2005 Posts: 2078 Location: Italy

I've the same problem after upgrading to last unstable baselayout and switching to wpa_supplicant (iwconfig doesn't work anymore for me). Every night, at random hours, network stops with signal 15 received from dhcpcd.
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UberLord · System uname: 2.6.15-nitro3 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1600+

smlgbl · Guru Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 305

So far i never had any problems with Nitro-Sources, but just timewise it might be the problem. but i don't recall when exactly i tried the latest version or when the problem actually started.
But i'll look into the gentoo-sources.

Might it be the new baselayout dgaffuri pointed out?

Thanks a lot, to all of you.
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mars-red · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 4:29 pm Post subject:

I've had fantastic luck with gentoo-sources, and everything works (including lappy stuff like power saving, speedstep, etc etc).

I have noticed the new ~x86 ipw2200 does not work on my system - drive loads and adapter finds wireless network, but is unable to get dhcp address - I rolled back to previous ipw2200 and it's happy again. I don't believe that's related to your problem, though.
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UberLord · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 4:35 pm Post subject:

dgaffuri · Advocate Joined: 05 Jun 2005 Posts: 2078 Location: Italy

ghutzl · Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 7:56 pm Post subject:

I am having the exact same problem. With the exception that my wireless connection barely stays up more than 10 minutes. Here's part of my /var/log/messages:

smlgbl · Guru Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 305

I didn't really change anything, but it seems like it didn't do it yesterday or today. I'll keep on watching. Fortunately it's not as bad with me as with ghutzl, sorry.

I tried just going back to wpa_supplicant-0.5.0, but i didn't know how to with portage.
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samuel.
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ghutzl · Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 9:48 pm Post subject:

I think I can help you with downgrading to an older version: Just mask the higher versions that you don't want by adding them to your /etc/portage/package.mask. For getting wpa_supplicant-0.5.0 you just add these two lines to your /etc/portage/package.mask:

ghutzl · Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:26 pm Post subject:

More news....

gdb didn't help. The dhcp process got killed and gdb just told me about the SIGTERM that the process got, but not from where it got it. Seems like I have to look for something else. Anyone having any idea?

UberLord · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 8:05 am Post subject:

Why not try another dhcp client? There's another 3 in portage
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smlgbl · Guru Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 305

Hey guys,

as sudden as it started it left again. I haven't had this problem for a couple of days. Just disappeared.

...these things make me wonder...
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samuel.
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morbid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Mar 2003 Posts: 90

I'm still having this issue. I've been thinking it was ifplugd... but net.ath0 shows as still running when my ath0 interface disappears. It has nothing to do with usage either... it keeps crapping out while I'm downloading OOo 2.0.2.

Oh... the reason I've thought it was ifplugd is because I never start net.ath0... it starts automatically. But in my ifplugd config, I specify it to only manage eth0 and also to ignore wireless connections. Neither net.ath0 or net.eth0 are in a runlevel.

smlgbl · Guru Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 305

I also experience it again. At first i wanted to just try another dhcp-client, like uberlord suggested, but now i've just tried updating madwifi, as there is an update available. We'll see, i just did the update like half hour ago, but will post back soon, if there are any changes.
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samuel.
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smlgbl · Guru Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 305

Could the people experiencing this problem pls post their kernel-versions and details, just to see if it is maybe the kernel-sources or nitro or something!
Thanks!
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samuel.
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morbid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Mar 2003 Posts: 90

sys-apps/baselayout-1.12.0_pre16-r3
net-wireless/madwifi-driver-0.1473.20060312
net-wireless/madwifi-tools-0.1473.20060312
net-wireless/wireless-tools-28_pre15
sys-kernel/archck-sources-2.6.15_p7

Despite these versions... I've been having this issue for about 3 months.

And I guess it's not ifplugd... I stopped it and manually started ath0 and eth0, but ath0 keeps disappearing and net.ath0 shows as "inactive".