[SOLVED] Inconsistent Wireless in 10.04

[kalsig]

Hi,

There are several threads that seem to be referencing wifi issues in 10.04. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find one on Linuxforums that describes my particular problem.

I have a TP-Link WN-321G USB wireless adapter that worked great in 9.10 but is giving me issues in 10.04. I've found several posts around the internet indicating that I'm not the only one with this problem but I have yet to find a solution.

When I attempt to connect to the network, it will connect about 5-10% of the time. Otherwise Wicd will give me a message to the effect of "Connection failed: Bad Password" If I try to connect to the network 10-15 times I can usually force my way in. The network is protected using WPA2-PSK. Using network-manager or the console instead of Wicd doesn't yield any results either.

Other forums are saying that it's a known bug with Ubuntu 10.04, or that switching to Wicd or WPA-PSK will solve the problem. I haven't been able to confirm whether it's a known bug, but bringing the encryption down to WPA-PSK certainly didn't solve the problem.

I'm not sure what my next steps should be. Would it be helpful to seek out drivers from my hardware vendor's site? Or to see if I can find an alternative WPA supplicant? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
kalsig

[yalex]

Hi there, I'm having the same problem. I am on a Dell e6400 with a broadcom wireless card. I had been running 9.04 persistently off of a USB drive and had no trouble with wireless.

But with 10.04 I haven't had any luck. I switched to wicd, but that hasn't helped. I am getting exactly the same error message you are. The one difference is that I haven't managed to connect at all.

Here's hoping someone out there knows how to fix this... tips anybody?

[kalsig]

I was on the forums again and somebody suggested that I try installing Wicd 1.6 rather than 1.7 (which is the default one in the repos for 10.04). It helped for about a day, I was able to get decent wifi. When I got home today however, I had a different problem: I couldn't obtain an IP address. I kept trying and managed to get it once. My ping was on the order of 5000ms. Needless to say, I don't think the issue has been solved.

Yalex, you can try 1.6... It might do something for you, let me know if it does. If anybody has any other suggestions for me, I'd love to hear them. Thanks.

-Kalsi

[kalsig]

Actually Yalex, perhaps we're not having the same problem. I've seen other people on various forums across the internet with the same problem as you. The general consensus appears to be to find a wired connection, open up synaptic and install the necessary broadcom drivers. Unfortunately, my card is not broadcom (it's a Ralink) so this solution doesn't really help me, but I hope it works for you!

[indy11]

I had this problem too: Ubuntu 10.4 - bad password error using WPA2 security even though the password is correct.

Solution for me was to replace Network Manager with WICD - But beware .... Use Terminal.

Using Synaptic Package Manager, I decided to discard Network Manager and replace it with WICD 1.7.0. A lot of you probably are groaning already but this is what I had done. I uninstalled Network Manager and Installed WICD.

Same bad password error persisted. So using a LAN connection I surfed around and found a solution at the launchpad website which I cannot link because I don't have enough posting history here. "If you google Ubuntu 10 wicd wpa2 bad password" you should find the URL. The solution came from responder #18. - Donjan Rodic.

I will reproduce the solution using Terminal that Donjan provided here:

First:

sudo aptitude remove network-manager

Then:

sudo /etc/init.d/wicd restart

Apparently, Network Manager is not removed effectively when you just use the synaptic package manager (being a lazy user, I try to use it as much as possible).

WICD now works like a charm and I am connected to my wireless WPA2 network as soon as I am booted up.

[cougar_w]

confirming indy11...

Problem: Using ThinkPad T410i with in-build Realtek 8192se chipset and their 0017 updated driver (no ndiswrappers) , could see APs, but could not connect via WPA 1 or 2 with a known working simple password. Wicd would give a "bad password" error and bail.

Solution: Install Wicd. For a fresh install of 10.4 "lucid" kernel 2.6.32 or 2.6.34, need to UNINSTALL network-manager and restart wicd per the above. I have heard this advised before to gank NM but didn't remember it soon enough.

It. Just. Werks.

For the record, the original "lucid" Realtek driver was IIRC 0015, and when it (rarely) worked the signal was weak. The 0017 driver improves the signal (and dramatically) and might also have helped solve above issues, no idea and not going to test it. Go with 0017 or higher to be safe.

You can get the 0017 driver directly from Realtek: google "Linux driver for the Realtek 8192SE card" and you should be close.

Hope this helps someone. I was 2 days fretting over this. Wireless on linux remains a bit of a pain, but we thank Realtek for their support here.