iwl4965 ERROR

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

I'm on a Thinkpad t61 running gentoo-sources 2.6.25-gentoo-r7.

Sometimes after a new boot when my wireless starts authenticating, or sometimes when I'm wpa_cli retrying to reassociate, the iwl4965 goes crazy and I get all this errors on my screen. Then I'm not able to kill iwl4965 or shutdown wpa_supplicant. And trying to reboot doesn't work either as the system waits for ever on iwl4965. My system basically hangs.

Here is the error message:

d2_racing · Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:33 am Post subject:

Hi, can you post this plz :

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

## emerge --info

d2_racing · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 1:16 am Post subject:

Hi, can you post this plz :

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

## cat /etc/conf.d/rc

d2_racing · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:34 pm Post subject:

I think that your net.wlan0 must start automatically because of /etc/conf.d/rc.

You need to add this :

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

The more I think about it, the more I think that this is some kind of kernel driver issue. I ran kubuntu for several months on this laptop and had no problem. But then I started to notice that sometimes things would slow down a lot, and the system would start to choke. iwl4965 would take up more cpu time than it should. This started to happed after one of kubuntu's automatic update. I can't be sure if it was a kernel upgrade or not, but I think it was.

So I installed gentoo on a spare harddrive just to see if I could get my wireless to work at school. I only installed the bare bones; not even X, just text mode. And iwl4965 still behaves strangely. I usually get that error and the computer hangs after iwl4965 has been sucking up all the cpu cycles.

d2_racing · Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 2:54 am Post subject:

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

Thanks for the RC_PLUG_SERVICES hint. Now wlan0 doesn't start automatically at boot, and that's how I wanted it.

As for 2.6.26, I tried 2.6.26-r1 but it didn't solve anything. In fact, the connection would die as soon as a connection was made. And I know it didn't solve anything because iwl4965 would still chock my system at times.

With 2.6.25-gentoo-r7 I'm able to stay connected sometimes as long as an hour.

I need to do more testing with 2.6.26-r1 to see if I get that error and to see if my system hangs.

I also have a feeling that wpa_supplicant might be a problem. I'll try some more tests with the latest version of wpa_supplicant and report back.

d2_racing · Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:33 pm Post subject:

For the record, can you unplug your router and retry. I have a Linksys WRT54G and once a month, I have to do this, because my wifi connection is dying too.

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

I mainly use my laptop at the university, so I can't touch their router. My home wireless connection is much simpler than the school's, but I still get the same results if I use it long enough. And I have reset my home router many times, and it doesn't seem to do anything.

The only difference between my home wireless and school is that at home I almost never get disconnected, but at school disconnections are very common. But still, no matter where, even if I'm not connecting to any network, as long as iwl4965 is loaded my system sometimes starts to chock and/or I get that original error that I posted and then my system hangs.

It's funny, the reason I got this laptop is because it hasan Intel wireless card and I thought it would work flawlessly as Intel releases their drivers as open source.

d2_racing · Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:03 am Post subject:

Hi, can you post your current section of your .config that is related with the wifi ?

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

Here is my wpa_supplicant.conf file. The RAT is my simple home wireless setup. UTDALLAS is the university's wireless and it gives me the most problems.

## cat /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

d2_racing · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:11 am Post subject:

Hi, can you try this line just to see if it will work better ?

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

No, it's stil the same.

The thing is, if I'm in the lab where I'm really close to the access point, then the connection never dies. But if I go to the library where the connection isn't as good, my connection sometimes dies. My system gets into trouble as I try to reconnect; i.e., i get those errors or my system starts chocking.

Just now I worked in the computer lab for nearly an hour and my connection never die. Now I'm here in the library and my connection only lasted less than 5 minutes. I have to run "reassociate" in wpa_cli to get my connection back or I have to kill iwl4965 and start all over, in which case my system may hang and requires a reboot.

Here is the last few lines of my /var/log/messages right after I lost my connection. There are some erros.

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

I manage to reconnect but I got disconnected again. I got this again in my /var/log/messages

d2_racing · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 2:11 pm Post subject:

I think the problem, is when you are disconnect, you have to run this :

gforum · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 31 Mar 2008 Posts: 140

i've said this before and ill say it again:

my wireless was all troublesome also, about a week ago, everything went away when i updated to the latest ucode. version 222.something or whatnot.
intel is just strange.

good luck

ArlexBee-871RBO · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 57 Location: Hell

nope, I tried 228.57.1.21 and 228.57.2.21.

*.2.21 made things worse; I couldn't even connect. *.1.21 is unstable just as 4.44.1.20.

All I can do is wait as I've wasted too much time on this. The hell with Intel and the hell with devs that write shitty drivers.