[SOLVED] No wireless signals. Wireless card is detected.

[abbasali]

Hello,

I recently bought a wireless router 54 Mbps 802.11g TRENDnet TEW-432BRP. I first test it on Vista and it worked seemlessly. I secured the router with WPA encryption shared key. I then rebooted the laptop to Kubuntu and the wireless worked there also. I was able to connect to the router by specifying the security key.

But when i started the kubuntu the next day, i was not able to see any wifi signals. The wifi connection was there (as i have saved it in the first go) in networkmanager but it was not getting connected. I tried rebooting a few times but no luck.

I am providing some debug info below. Hope it will help in finding the issue.

Machine - Toshiba L310 Laptop
Wireless card - Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (from lspci)

iwconfig

wlan0     IEEE 802.11abg  ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.417 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Tx-Power=15 dBm
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0


iwlist scan
wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:14:D1:3F:BC:6F
                    ESSID:"TRENDnet"
                    Mode:Master
                    Channel:6
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality=62/100  Signal level:-70 dBm  Noise level=-127 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    IE: WPA Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
                              12 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Extra:tsf=0000000265e8f181
                    Extra: Last beacon: 1336ms ago

dmesg (only related to wireless)
[   15.969764] iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for Linux, 1.2.26ks                                                       
[   15.969768] iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2008 Intel Corporation                                                                                             
[   16.013596] iwl3945 0000:08:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17                                                                              
[   16.013612] iwl3945 0000:08:00.0: setting latency timer to 64                                                                                             
[   16.013641] iwl3945: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 3945ABG                                                                                            
[   16.076575] iwl3945: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 23 802.11a channels 
[   16.413067] iwl3945 0000:08:00.0: PCI INT A disabled 
[   94.997260] iwl3945 0000:08:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17                                                                              
[   94.997411] iwl3945 0000:08:00.0: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100002, writing 0x100006)

OS - Kubuntu 8.10
Kernel - 2.6.27-9-generic i686

I will appreciate any help in this regards.

Thanks.

[waterhead]

Maybe the connection settings got screwed up somehow. Try deleting the saved setting for the connection, and try it anew. You can delete it by right clicking the NetworkManager icon and selecting Edit Connections.

[abbasali]

Hi,

That was the first thing i tried but no luck there as well.

As far as i remember the only thing i did was commented out the eth0 connection from /etc/network/interfaces so that my dsl modem works with wireless router (which it did). And after that when i rebooted the wifi stopped working.

Since the signals are being shown in "iwlist scan" - what might be the possible issues? I think that wifi card is detected and drivers are all installed properly - the only thing is that it is not finding the wifi signals.

[waterhead]

Try changing it back. Network changes don't take effect until the network device is either disabled and then enabled, or after a reboot.

[abbasali]

I tried changing it back as well. The first time when i commented out eth0 - i restarted the network using "/etc/init.d/networking restart" and thus the changes took effect at that time.

After changing it back - i have restarted the network/laptop quite a few times as well.

[waterhead]

It may be something deeper than you suspect. Read through this sticky, and post the the outputs of the commands it suggests.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/wir...tart-here.html

[abbasali]

Ok - will post the info as soon as i reach home where i have my laptop.

Thanks for helping out.

[MikeTbob]

This is a long shot and may not even be relevant, but did you update the kernel? It could have updated itself overnight. If this has happened you might need to reinstall the driver or module. Did you have to install anything to make the card work, when you first installed it?

[abbasali]

Well yes - I remember that i updated the system using adept after the wireless first worked. So yes it is a possibilty that kernel might have been updated causing the wifi issue.

I haven't done anything special to make the card work when i installed it first. It worked out of the box.

Can you please point me how to re-install the driver/module? I could have done this myself but since i didn't installed the driver in the first place - i don't know how to do it.

But if the driver was not compatible with the latest kernel, then why is it showing wlan0 in "iwconfig" and "iwlist scan"?

[MikeTbob]

But if the driver was not compatible with the latest kernel, then why is it showing wlan0 in "iwconfig" and "iwlist scan"?

That's why I said it might not be relevant, if it worked right out of the box the first time, then it should work right out of the box with an updated kernel. I would suggest that you follow the link waterhead pointed out, and post the relevant info, we're going to need it after all.