WiFi Networks device not managed - Mint 16 on X200[SOLVED]

[epeesharkey]

[Update : This is marked solved, but in fact despite extensive investigation, the cause of the issue wasnever discovered. If you read to the end you can find many good tips and ideas on troubleshooting WiFi issues, not sure if they are specific to the case of LM 16 on Lenovo X200Tablet or not. Using information provided on this thread, I was able to make a satisfactory workaround by following a pretty simple and painless upgrade to LM17, which so far (+ 5 days) is working fine. Thanks to fellow-user patH57 for many great suggestions and to all others who contributed.]

Hi

I searched but found nothing exactly like this ...

About 4 weeks ago, the WiFi on a Lenovo X200tablet LM16 just stopped working. It had worked flawlessly for the previous 6 months, and there had been no changes to the WiFi or broadband settings on the router.

On the networking icon in the tray, it shows, Wireless Networks device not managed, in greyed-out text.

Under Windows Vista (it is a dual-boot), the WiFi works fine, just as normal. If I boot from USB into LM16, WiFi also works fine.
Under LM16 normal boot, I can use the Wired Ethernet just fine - but that is no use as the room it is normally used in by one of my kids is wireless only.

I strongly suspect there is something awry with a config file or setting, but I have not idea how, or even where to look.

I eventually found there was a programme called mintWifi, and below are the output, somewhat edited to save space.

Can anyone offer any suggestions ?



* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
-- Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection
==> PCI ID = 8086:4237
-------------------------
* II. querying ndiswrapper...
-------------------------
* III. querying iwconfig...
wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=15 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

-------------------------
* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1f:16:29:7d:61
......

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
......

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1e:65:a1:12:06
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)

wlan0:avahi Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1e:65:a1:12:06
inet addr:169.254.4.50 Bcast:169.254.255.255 Mask:255.255.0.0
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

-------------------------
* V. querying DHCP...

[PatH57]

Hi,

strange.
could you post back

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rfkill list

[epeesharkey]

Hello path57,

here is the output from

sudo rfkill list

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0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no

It means nothing to me !

By the way, in thinking about why this might have happened. Soon before this happened, my daughter who was using the laptop accidentally turned off the little hardware switch for the wireless card. [This is a funny feature which I also have seen on a later Thinkpad -- a little hardware switch near the front on the side of the laptop. This switch must be in 'On' position, before you can then enable WiFi through a Function key and/or control panel settings]. At the time simply turning the hardware switch back on restarted Wireless, but soon after it went into the state shown. I am wondering if some setting or config got into a bad state about that time ?

Thanks for any further help you can offer. I have considered doing a fresh install, but would rather not - since I cannot see any way of doing that without wiping out the Windows Vista which is the original install on this second user machine.

[PatH57]

seems you are not getting an ip from your router (that's why you have the avahi daemon running)

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sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

[epeesharkey]

The strange reply from that command is below.

I am getting an IP address from the router - the wired Ethernet works fine (how you are seeing this reply !)

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eoin@eoin-ThinkPad-X200T ~ $     sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
[sudo] password for eoin: 
ERROR: Calling a sysvinit script on a system using upstart isn't supported. Please use the 'service' command instead.

[JeremyB]

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ls /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections

[PatH57]

Occasionally you may encounter a host which has somehow assigned itself an IP address in the 169.254.0.0/16 range. This is a particularly common symptom of Windows machines which have been configured for DHCP but for whatever reason are unable to contact a DHCP server. When a host fails to dynamically acquire an address, it can optionally assign itself a link-local IPv4 address in accordance with RFC 3927.

yours does this for the wlan connection.

wlan0:avahi Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1e:65:a1:12:06
inet addr:169.254.4.50 Bcast:169.254.255.255 Mask:255.255.0.0
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

I would first reboot the router to make sure the ip was not assigned to another unit, this will also refresh your network.

[epeesharkey]

JeremyB : the output from system-connections is

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Wi-Fi connection 1

PatH57 : I dare say you are right about the strange IP address, however I think that may be a symptom rather than a cause of what is happening.
At the moment I cannot re-boot the router (since the laptop cannot be used for now). However the router has been re-booted at least once (probably more) since this issue presented itself. By the way the router 'remembers' the laptop and says it last had an IP address of 192.168.xxx.yyy but says it is 'Not Connected' at present.

[PatH57]

I think that may be a symptom rather than a cause of what is happening

that's correct, it's why I asked to reboot the router first.

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dmesg | grep -i wlan

and try:
edit your wifi settings and disable dhcp, give it a fixed IP and try to connect again.

[JeremyB]

I think that may be a symptom rather than a cause of what is happening

that's correct, it's why I asked to reboot the router first.

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dmesg | grep -i wlan

and try:
edit your wifi settings and disable dhcp, give it a fixed IP and try to connect again.

PatH

I wonder why it is in mode managed access point instead of just managed, it is almost like it was put in hotspot mode

[PatH57]

that's what we are trying to figure out still a hotspot would have given a "normal" IP.... avahi only kicks in if no IP could be obtained.

[epeesharkey]

the output of dmesg | grep -i wlan is a series of rows with text like

[ 11.2359777] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP) : wlan0: link is not ready
....different number . rest of line same repreated 4 times
[ 622.208651] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP) : wlan0: link is not ready

I opened the control panel Network Settings, and edited the wireless connection to give it a fixed IP address. When I saved it , the Wireless connection has vanished from the list of Network Settings.

Then I opened control panel Netowkr Connections. I edited the connection Wi-Fi connection 1 and for IPv4 gave it method = manual and and address, Netmask and Gateway corresponding to the router. I re-started the laptop - now the network icon no longer appears in the tray. The laptop is as devoid of wireless networking as before.

Unfortunately the CEO of my enterprise (also my wife !) needs the internet connection held up for work purposes, so I cannot re-boot the router itself at present (but as I say it has re-booted several times since the issue reared it's head).

Are there any procedures that can allow me to do a 'factory reset' of the Linux Mint 16 without having to do a full re-install ?

[PatH57]

ipv6? there must have been a change in the router.



Here's how to check to see if ipv6 is enabled on your computer

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test -f /proc/net/if_inet6 && echo "Running kernel is IPv6 ready"

If you see

Running kernel is IPv6 ready

it is enabled.

If you see no output, it is not.

To disable ipv6 , blacklist ipv6 all-together. To do this, use the following command:

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echo 'blacklist ipv6' | sudo tee -a '/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.local' >/dev/null 

Also, this might help as well:

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echo 'install ipv6 /bin/true' | sudo tee -a '/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.local' >/dev/null

Reboot for the changes to take effect. To check if it's enabled after startup run this command again:

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test -f /proc/net/if_inet6 && echo "Running kernel is IPv6 ready"

There should be no output.

[epeesharkey]

Hi,

there are no changes in the router that I am aware of (and I should be the only one making changes). I checked again and the router is configured to give out IPv4 addresses only.

I ran most of the commands you suggested. The output suggests :

a) The laptop is set up for IPv6 addresses
and
b) the commands to disable it didn't work

Now a new symptom has appearerd - the wired Ethernet connection, while continuning to work, does not connect to internet.

I am increasingly of the belief that the problem is not with the router, but with some settings or config of the laptop. Need to find a 'Restore Factory defaults' button !

[PatH57]

well the only thing we can do is to restart the network manager this will reset the connections (assuming nothing was changed in Mint before)

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sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

[epeesharkey]

Thanks again for all your help - it is much appreciated.

I should be able to try out this networking reset and also a restart of the router this evening.

Will post back with any progress.

[JeremyB]

Why not switch to LM 17 as LM 16 is no longer supported?

[epeesharkey]

to PatH57,

I cannot run the networking restart command, same response as earlier :

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    eoin@eoin-ThinkPad-X200T ~ $     sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
    [sudo] password for eoin:
    ERROR: Calling a sysvinit script on a system using upstart isn't supported. Please use the 'service' command instead.

I shut-down the laptop. Then did a soft reset of the router (AVM FritzBox), taking the opportunity to bring the firmware to latest version (it was .02 behind, so not major). On rebooting the router, I asked it to provide the laptop with a fixed IP address (though as you will see that makes no difference, since the laptop is not actually reaching the router to ask for an IP address.)

On re-starting the laptop I find the same situation as yesterday, i.e. the Wireless is still apparently active but completely unrecognised by Linux Mint. The ethernet is apparently active but not connecting to the internet.

I am going to 'come clean' here and say, when this issue first arose (which is about 4 weeks ago, and soon after I went on holiday for 2 weeks then spent a week not thinking about it). I googled it (probably unwisely), and found the symptom ( of the greyed out WiFi Networks device not managed) seemed exactly to match a Ubuntu bug report (here : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/811441 ). I will admit that I tried probably several of the solutions given here

For sure I tried :

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If anyone still experience delay in system booting with message "waiting for network configuration" after following post #9, you can try to comment out the line "auto wlan0" in /etc/network/interfaces.

and...

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I know, it's weird, but this simple command works for me:
sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart
Now everything works fine.

and maybe a few other things which I cannot even recall.

My working hypothesis is either something bad happened on my laptop and/or my well-intentioned fixes have messed it up good & proper. The ideas mentioned on the thread so far have made things functionally worse (i.e. Ethernet now not working), but again I think that is a symptom of something deeper being wrong,

To the person who suggested LM17, I don't have any conceptual problem with that, my main issue is that the laptop is a dual boot and I cannot see how to do a clean install just on top of the LM16, preserving the Windows Vista (for which I don't have install discs - 2nd hand, (legit !) machine). If there is a way of upgrading LM16 'in-situ' to LM17, I am up for that. Or if there is a way of re-installing LM16 on top of the current install (as one could do with Windows for instance), happy to give that a shot.

Apologies for not explaining the above sooner, I have been hoping ever since this issue first appeared that some bit of Linux 'magic' would just fix the wireless.

[epeesharkey]

From a different (Ubuntu --- sorry) forum I found this :

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http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2198750

to which someone replied

The syntax to restart any service in Ubuntu is:

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sudo service servicename restart

So for your instance:

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sudo service networking restart

I tried that ... and it seemed to work, but then the networking tray vanished and wouldn't come back.

I rebooted the laptop, and it is back to same situation Ethernet active but not connecting to anything, Wireless 'on' but cannot be reached.

[epeesharkey]

in fact....

sudo service networking restart

is producing a positive effect.

The 'Network Manager is stopping (shown by the system tray icon greying out with a small red arrow.

However the Ethernet springs into life and works fine. WiFi is still not working though. I am increasingly mystified, I always thought the little system tray icon was the only way to manage networking of the latop, but it seems it is merely one way !