Cisco AM10 not working in Qiana and other new distros

[Bainespal]

(mintWifi output at end)

I was using SolydK in March when a major update broke support for my USB network adapter, a Cisco Valet Connector AM10. I swithced to Linux Mint 16 Xfce, which I've been using since.

In the meantime, I've tested several recent distributions on live USB, and I feel relatively certain that the problematic driver update is included in the Mint 17/Ubuntu 14.04 cycle. In most cases, I find that the wifi is completely undected, but it has worked on rare occassion. On the few occassions that the wifi has worked on live sessions of Mint 17, Ubuntu 14.04, and Manjaro, I've had no idea why it decided to work.

This is probably related to the package usb-modeswitch, because the Cisco Valet Connector AM10 is also a USB storage device. Unfortunately, I didn't record the version that was on my SolydK system when it broke. However, I've written down the versions in my later experiments:

• Mint 16
  usb-modeswitch: 1.2.3+repack0-1ubuntu3
  usb-modeswitch-data: 20120815-2
• SolydX
  usb-modeswitch: 2.1.0+repack0-1+b1
  usb-modeswitch-data: 20140129-1
• Ubuntu 14.04
  usb-modeswitch: 2.1.1+repack0-1ubuntu1
  usb-modeswitch-data: 20140327-1
• Mint 17 -- same as Ubuntu 14.04

One time I fixed a live session of Mint 17 Cinnamon 64-bit by uninstalling usb-modeswitch and usb-modeswitch-data with Synaptic, and then running the package installers usb-modeswitch_2.1.1+repack0-1_amd64.deb and usb-modeswitch-data_20140327-1_all.deb, which I had downloaded from Debian's repository website with my working installation of Mint 16. After installing those two packages, the wifi network was discovered. However, there were a small handful of times when an unmodified live system of Mint 17 or Ubuntu 14.04 (or Manjaro) worked.

I'm now using 32bit of the new version 2 ISO of Mint 17 Cinnamon. I decided to install after the wifi randomly worked from the live USB. However, after installation the network was undetectable again. I tried my old trick -- I replaced the default versions of the two modeswitch packages with 2.2.0+repack0-1_i386 and data_20140529 from Debian, but this time it didn't work.

Then I erased that installation by re-installing, but this time the live USB couldn't connect to wifi, either. This is the current system I'm booting on that computer.

mintWifi

Mint 17:

Code: Select all

-------------------------
* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
-------------------------
* II. querying ndiswrapper...
-------------------------
* III. querying iwconfig...
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

-------------------------
* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:d3:29:77:2d  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:17 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:97 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:97 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:7567 (7.5 KB)  TX bytes:7567 (7.5 KB)

-------------------------
* V. querying DHCP...
-------------------------
* VI. querying nslookup google.com...

For comparison, I saved the output from my old Petra installation, where the wifi worked perfectly:

Code: Select all

sudo /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintWifi/mintWifi.py

-------------------------
* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
-------------------------
* II. querying ndiswrapper...
-------------------------
* III. querying iwconfig...
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"linksys0527"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:23:69:32:3A:FE   
          Bit Rate=27 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=33/70  Signal level=-77 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:13  Invalid misc:95   Missed beacon:0

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

-------------------------
* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:d3:29:77:2d  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:17 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:199 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:199 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:19440 (19.4 KB)  TX bytes:19440 (19.4 KB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:25:9c:fe:1e:39  
          inet addr:192.168.1.113  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::225:9cff:fefe:1e39/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2365 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1661 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:850206 (850.2 KB)  TX bytes:311708 (311.7 KB)

-------------------------
* V. querying DHCP...
RTNETLINK answers: File exists
-------------------------
* VI. querying nslookup google.com...
Server:		208.67.222.222
Address:	208.67.222.222#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.100
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.99
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.110
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.103
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.98
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.101
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.105
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.104
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.96
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.102
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.97

[Bainespal]

So, it's pretty clear that this is probably a kernel problem. I'm not sure if the usb-modeswitch packages are relevant at all, even though patching them did work once on a live session. The Debian website says this:

On Debian, this is not needed, since the driver is included as a Linux kernel module, such as "usbserial".

I searched kernel.org and found the specific driver used for the Cisco AM10:
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Dri ... le_devices

I think I should try downgrading the kernel. I'll see if I can figure out how to do that. I've seen the other threads.

[Bainespal]

Downgrading the kernel didn't work.

I successfully downgraded to 3.11.10:

Code: Select all

paul@paul-HP-dx5150-SFF-PZ585UA ~ $ uname -a
Linux paul-HP-dx5150-SFF-PZ585UA 3.11.10-03111013-generic #201407081235 SMP Tue Jul 8 16:44:49 UTC 2014 i686 athlon i686 GNU/Linux

Sorry, I lost track of the thread that I used for downgrading instructions.

The network is still not visible.

[ohmysql]

Ok, hold on, would you post some of your outputs as in this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1808690

ndiswrapper -l
modinfo ndiswrapper
modinfo rt*


I forget, but there are a bunch of relevant outputs.

That thread also has the driver you need, which was mentioned in this thread as RT2800usb. You want to do some


I forget where the command is but you want to see if the device is switching USB codes to something like 1307:1169. If it is, then usb-modeswitch is working.

Check out this thread as well:

http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswit ... 5&start=75