[SOLVED] WiFi issues on Toshiba 550D

[joeyc]

Hi all

I am dual booting Mageia with Windows 7. I have been experiencing two problems with establishing WiFi connections.

While I was using the Gnome desktop, I was able to successfully configure and connect to WiFi. However, it often required a reboot. That is, I would setup the connection and say "start connection now" (or something like that) and it would say the connection failed. On reboot, the connection would be up and running (Yay).

I recently switched to KDE and I cannot get the connection working. Now when I switch back to Gnome, I still cant get it to work.

I can get the connection to work in Windows 7 however and they both appear to be using the exact same details.

My machine is a Toshiba 550D. There are known issues with the WiFi enable / disable key being hardblocked and only able to be toggled in Windows 7. I am finding the above chain of events to be very confusing though.

I understand I have't given you all the information you need to diagnose this so please let me know what you need (yes, I have read this viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2731 but it seems like the consensus is "less is more" so, again, please tell me what you need to know).

Thanks in advance for your help.

[djennings]

If you click on the mageia network status applet in the system tray does it show your wireless adapter is present, and if so can you scan for networks?

Is the wireless light lit on your laptop?

[djennings]

From what I read on the internet the Toshiba 550D suffers from a similar problem that the Asus eee has with enabling the wireless modem/bluetooth in Linux

The solution for the Asus eee is a package called eee-control It is just possible eee-control might work on a Toshiba too.
If you install eee-control (you will find it in the Mgeia software install GUI) you can start it from somewhere under the tools menu. On starting eee-control you will see an icon appear in the system tray. From that icon you can enable/disable the wireless modem.

As I said, it may not work on a Tosh, but it cannot do any harm to try.

[doktor5000]

That is, I would setup the connection and say "start connection now" (or something like that) and it would say the connection failed. On reboot, the connection would be up and running (Yay).

Did you only pay attention to the outcome of the check or the "connection failed" message, or did you verify
that there was really no internet connection, e.g. by opening a browser, or pinging some server or so?

As the default timeout for the check is quite small, and it mostly shows "connection failed" whereas
the connection will be fine some seconds after that, which is quite ironic
The other possible problem is deception - under Gnome you don't really see the default Mageia network applet,
it will be in the bottom right corner and hidden by Gnome. And Gnome's networkmanager will show that there is
no connection, but if you setup your connection there too, this may lead to conflicts.

So just try again to login to Gnome, and fire up a browser and check if you can access the web
or at least the IP adress of your router.

[joeyc]

If you click on the mageia network status applet in the system tray does it show your wireless adapter is present, and if so can you scan for networks?

Is the wireless light lit on your laptop?

I can scan for networks but I cannot connect to them. The Network Status Applet always shows as "down" (globe with a red cross against it).

The wireless light has always been red when wifi is active. I have never seen it green before. It is red when I have connected to networks and it has been red when I cannot.

[joeyc]

So just try again to login to Gnome, and fire up a browser and check if you can access the web
or at least the IP adress of your router.

Logged into gnome.
Attempted connecting to the network (connection failed).

Attempted to load google in browser - cannot find server

Any ideas or ways I can get more detailed info about what is happening?

[tom_]

Any ideas or ways I can get more detailed info about what is happening?

check the file /var/log/syslog and the dmesg output,
there should be a lot of details

[djennings]

Try using the 'rfkill' command.

Install the rfkill package then

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rfkill list

to list your devices. You should see your wireless modem and bluetooth listed.

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rfkill unblock <device>

to enable the selected device.

See if that makes any difference to the output of the iwconfig command.

[joeyc]

@djennings
running rfkill says that my wifi and bluetooth are neither hardblocked nor softblocked. I didn't have to do any unblocking.

my iwconfig output is the following (typing this freehand so please excuse any typos). can you tell me some other things to try? Thanks a lot!

It might also be worth noting that I can access a network that does not require authentication with seemingly no problem. So I would guess the problem is with the network manager losing my credentials along the way. Just a theory.

lo no wireless extensions

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID: "belkin.7464"
Mode: Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=16 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power management: on

eth0 no wireless extensions

[joeyc]

can anyone give me a hand with this?

[doktor5000]

Your best bet is probably to remove your current configuration/the interface, quit Networkmanager and redo it from scratch.
Or maybe first try to quit Networkmanager, and just reconfigure the interface via

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drakconnect

[joeyc]

Hi doktor - I tried drakconnect. I got this failure which will hopefully provide more useful info

Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory
Failed to create host name resolver: Invalid host name
run-parts: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/hostname.d/avahi exited with return code 1
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.
Line 958: Invalid PSK ''.
Line 958: failed to parse psk ''.
Line 961: WPA-PSK accepted for key management, but no PSK configured.
Line 961: failed to parse network block.
Failed to read or parse configuration '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf'.

Any idea whats going on?

[doktor5000]

Please provide the following information (as root in a terminal)

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uname -n
hostname
cat /etc/hosts

For the one error about the hostname. What you could do is

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urpme wpa_supplicant && urpmi wpa_supplicant
rm -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan*
rm -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/*

This would remove all wireless configuration (except for NetworkManager, can't really help you with that as i don't use it, sorry)
and then you can start from scratch. That is, if Networkmanager is not running. And please make sure in the
final step of drakconnect (the summary step) please deselect the checkbox "Allow Networkmanager to control this interface".

You can make sure that is set correctly afterwards via

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grep NM /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0

[joeyc]

[root@localhost joey]# uname -n
localhost.localdomain
[root@localhost joey]# hostname
localhost.localdomain
[root@localhost joey]# cat /etc/hosts
# generated by drakconnect
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
[root@localhost joey]#

How does it look, doktor?

I tried running urpme wpa_supplicant && urpmi wpa_supplicant and it seemed to remove the packages OK, but it couldn''t install the packages it was attempting to download (because I didn't have a network connection - will paste this output at the bottom because I am not sure if its important)

Then I tried the following

[root@localhost joey]# rm -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan*
[root@localhost joey]# rm -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/*

And no further output was printed.

Then I tried

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[root@localhost joey]# grep NM /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg_wlan0
grep: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg_wlan0: No such file or directory
[root@localhost joey]# grep NM /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg_wlanO
grep: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg_wlanO: No such file or directory

Not sure if thats what you were expecting or not? Or am I supposed to download the package that failed to download? I tried connecting via ethernet cable and was not able to do that either. Here is the failed download message

Failed to download wpa_supplicant-0.7.3-6.mga2.i586.rpm
Retry? (y/N) n
...retrieving failed: aria2 failed: exited with 19

Installation failed, some files are missing:
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/mageia/ ... 2.i586.rpm
You may need to update your urpmi database.

Try to continue anyway? (y/N) y

[doktor5000]

How does it look, doktor?

You should set a hostname. Here it looks like this:

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[doktor5000@Mageia2 ~]$ hostname
Mageia2
[doktor5000@Mageia2 ~]$ cat /etc/hosts
# generated by drakconnect
127.0.0.1 Mageia2
127.0.0.1 localhost

FWIW uname -n (queries the hostname directly from the kernel) and hostname output should not differ, but as you got some weird error before about invalid hostname, i thought double-checking it would do no harm either.

[root@localhost joey]# rm -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan*
[root@localhost joey]# rm -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/*

And no further output was printed.

In unix/linux there's a golden rule: no message is good message
As there were no errors, command finished successfully as expected, it deleted the files.

Then I tried

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[root@localhost joey]# grep NM /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg_wlan0
grep: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg_wlan0: No such file or directory
[root@localhost joey]# grep NM /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg_wlanO
grep: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg_wlanO: No such file or directory

Not sure if thats what you were expecting or not? Or am I supposed to download the package that failed to download? I tried connecting via ethernet cable and was not able to do that either. Here is the failed download message

Well, you just deleted the files, so you cannot query anything from them.
You should have done this after you have successfully re-setup your wireless connection.

And yes, you need to install that package, otherwise you can only connect to unnecrypted or WEP-secured networks.
So you need to download it somewhere else and install it manually OR connect your box via wire to the internet,
and update your repos (urpmi.update -a or via the graphical repo manager, drakrpm-edit-media) before you try to install it again.

[joeyc]

Hi doktor -

I managed to reinstall the wpa_supplicant. However, I am still getting the same vague "there were problems" message.

One thing that is interesting though, is that when I retry configuring the connection, it seems to forget that the encryption type was WPA Enterprise and defaults to "none." Perhaps this has something to do with it? This happens whether I go through Drakconnect or the Network Manager in KDE.

Running the grep command above returns a negative result after installing the wpa_supplicant and doing urpmi.update -a

Thanks for all of your suggestions so far in trying to debug this. I am sure we will get there eventually. Any other ideas?

[doktor5000]

This happens whether I go through Drakconnect or the Network Manager in KDE.

Please only use one tool. Also, please show the output as root of

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ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep -i net

The problem with the error message when initiating the connection even happens when the connection
was created successfully, as the timeout is much too short for most devices, happens here to.

And that it forgets WPA settings and defaults to WEP/open is also a common issue, but mostly
only happens when you use draknetcenter or drakroam, cause yet unknown. When only using drakconnect it _should_ not happen.

For troubleshooting purposes, you may want to take a look at: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi ... nual_setup

Also please show the output of

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iwconfig

and

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iwlist wlan0 scanning

For that please use code tags as explained in ftp://ftp.mandrivauser.de/rpm/rpm/extra ... e_tags.ogv

[joeyc]

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[root@localhost joey]# ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep -i net
root        14     2  0 Nov19 ?        00:00:00 [netns]

I didn't do the iwlist command because it printed 30+ cells of available wifi connection points. Is it necessary to print them all?

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[root@localhost joey]# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Tx-Power=16 dBm
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on

eth0      no wireless extensions.

[doktor5000]

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[root@localhost joey]# ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep -i net
root        14     2  0 Nov19 ?        00:00:00 [netns]

So neither net_applet, the default Mageia tool nor NetworkManager are running. How do you manage your network connections currently?

I didn't do the iwlist command because it printed 30+ cells of available wifi connection points. Is it necessary to print them all?

No, but that shows at least that the wireless device is working properly and is able to see connectable networks.
Can you try to manually establish a connection via a terminal as previously described in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi ... nual_setup ?

[joeyc]

Hi there and thanks again for your help

So neither net_applet, the default Mageia tool nor NetworkManager are running. How do you manage your network connections currently?

Not sure how to answer this. I haven't had any network connections which is my problem. I get the feeling I have missed the point of your question. If you can tell me how to find this out, maybe that would be more helpful

I followed the instructions from the link. I was unable to set the mode to Master which is the mode for the network I want to connect to. Should I post the details about the network that is printed when I do an iwlist? This is the output btw

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#iwconfig wlan0 mode Master
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (9B06)  :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument
 

Also, if the network details say "Encryption key:on" does that mean I need to put something in the encryption key field? Because I can't enter anything through the drakconnect UI.

Also, when i try and connect through drakconnect, the first error I get is

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Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory


Perhaps something is pointing to the wrong thing?

[doktor5000]

No, both errors are no real problems, happen here too, well at least the first one, but also the second seems pretty common to me. Can you please show the output as root of

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wpa_cli ping

and

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wpa_cli status

And for the applet, you should have at least one tool, which manages the connections. If

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ps -ef | grep -vE 'grep|netns' | grep -i net

returns nothing, then please start net_applet via Alt+F2 under KDE.

[joeyc]

I hope this proves useful

output of wpa_cli ping

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[root@localhost joey]# wpa_cli ping
Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory


output of wpa_cli status

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^C[root@localhost joey]# wpa_cli status
Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory


no response from the find

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[root@localhost joey]# ps -ef | grep -vE 'grep|netns' | grep -i net


tried running net_applet and connecting to my desired network

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[root@localhost joey]# net_applet
Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_cell_view_set_cell_data: assertion `cell_view->priv->displayed_row != NULL' failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/interactive/gtk.pm line 520.
Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_cell_view_set_cell_data: assertion `cell_view->priv->displayed_row != NULL' failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/interactive/gtk.pm line 520.
Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_cell_view_set_cell_data: assertion `cell_view->priv->displayed_row != NULL' failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/interactive/gtk.pm line 520.
Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_cell_view_set_cell_data: assertion `cell_view->priv->displayed_row != NULL' failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/interactive/gtk.pm line 520.
Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_cell_view_set_cell_data: assertion `cell_view->priv->displayed_row != NULL' failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/interactive/gtk.pm line 520.
Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
    invalid argument "s:".


[doktor5000]

OK, so this is a problem with wpa_supplicant. Please show the output of:

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rpm -q wpa_supplicant
rpm -V wpa_supplicant
grep -v ^# /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

(you might want to remove your pre-shared key from the output of the last command)

[joeyc]

Hi doktor and thanks for advising me to remove the authentication info I have just been copying and pasting blindly to be honest with you!

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[root@localhost joey]# rpm -q wpa_supplicant
wpa_supplicant-0.7.3-6.mga2

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[root@localhost joey]# rpm -V wpa_supplicant
S.5...GT.  c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf


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[root@localhost joey]# grep -v ^# /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
network={
    psk=<removed>
    priority=1
    scan_ssid=0
    ssid="corea"
}

network={
    key_mgmt=NONE
    mode=0
    ssid="Atlassian"
    proto=RSN WPA
    group=CCMP TKIP
    password=<removed>
    identity=<removed>
    pairwise=CCMP TKIP
    scan_ssid=1
}

Thanks

[joeyc]

Please let me know if there is any other information you need.