Wireless Problems in Linux Mint 13 Maya [SOLVED]

[Mordechai]

Greetings,

I have recently installed Lint Minux 13 Xfce on an older Compaq Presario F700. It is a wonderful operating system and I am intrigued by the notion of learning the ropes of Linux.

I have had it installed for a little over a day and a half. After waking up this morning, I found that I could not get my wireless to work. The machine will recognize other networks if they are in range, but it will not actually connect to them (the 'connect' button will be greyed out after I type in the password to connect to my network).

Here are my hardware specifications via inxi:

CPU~Dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-57 (-MCP-) clocked at 800.000 Mhz Kernel~3.2.0-23-generic i686 Up~1:09 Mem~623.1/937.6MB HDD~160.0GB(5.6% used) Procs~158 Client~Shell inxi~1.7.33

Any advice would be welcome. I am continuing to comb for ways to fix this.

[karlchen]

Hello, Mordechai.

I found that I could not get my wireless to work. The machine will recognize other networks if they are in range, but it will not actually connect to them (the 'connect' button will be greyed out after I type in the password to connect to my network).

I may be a bit slow in the uptake, but to me what you write here reads like this:
My machine sees other WLANs. But I cannot connect to any of them using the password for my own WLAN. - Is this what you are saying?
This is to be expected. Using my own WLAN password my machine can connect to my own router only, too. The other routers will have different passwords.
Moreover, my machine sees other WLANs as well but most of them will not be strong enough to connect to them from my home. I.e. the wifi signal can be detected, but it is not strong enough to allow connecting to them from my location. - Could this be the problem?

About the hardware configuration that you posted: a bit too short, in particular the network details are missing, a bit counter-productive when talking about a wifi problem, right?!
Could you please post the complete output of

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxz

(Note: the lowercase z will make sure that no MAC addresses will be revealed)

Cheers,
Karl

[Mordechai]

Karl,

Thank you for your help. I'm not really sure how much of a newbie technical question this is (I suspect the answer to that is 'very') but I do appreciate the help!

Here are the results of the complete output of 'inxi -Fxz' -

http://pastebin.com/AGjHRius

My computer can detect my wireless router. When prompted to enter a password or network key, this is how it looks on my end (I marked out the name of my network):

http://i.imgur.com/IHGgqUf.png

The button to connect is greyed out. I know that other laptops are able to connect to the router wirelessly.

[karlchen]

Hello,

Code: Select all

Network:   Card-1: NVIDIA MCP67 Ethernet driver: forcedeth port: 30f8 bus-ID: 00:0a.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) driver: ath5k bus-ID: 03:00.0
           IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter>

The network section displayed by "inxi -Fxz" tells us that your wifi card is down.
As long as the interface card-2 is down, you will not be able to connect to your router wirelessly.

The question is why is it down? - Mint has detected the wifi adapter, it has identified it and it has loaded a driver, ath5k.

Could you, please, execute the terminal command

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sudo rfkill list

This will not kill anything, but because you tell rfkill to list only, it will list the existing wifi adapters and display whether they are blocked, and if they are blocked whether they are blocked by software or by hardware.

Cheers,
Karl

[Mordechai]

Karl,

Code: Select all

sean@Compaq ~/Desktop $ sudo rfkill list
0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no

Thank you once again.

[karlchen]

Hello, Mordechai.

Hm, actually I had expected rfkill to display either a softblock "yes" or a hardblock "yes". But it is none of the two.
You reported that the wifi LCD stays on orange instead of going blue.
Now for Windows, not for Linux, I found that on some Presarios and some Windows versions it is necessary to press the wifi switch when Windows starts booting. If you press it afterwards, the wifi light will not turn blue and wifi will not be usable. Cf. here
Could Linux Mint and your wifi adapter interact in a similar way perhaps? I.e. you would have to press the wifi switch while Mint starts loading?


What else you could try is this:

For testing purposes disconnect the network cable from your Presario and reboot it with no wired connection. Perhaps this will make the wifi adapter take over?
(If it does not work, re-connecting the network cable will be no hassle and you will be back to the current situation)

You might also try this in a terminal window:

• Try to switch the wifi adapter on:

  Code: Select all

  sudo ifup wlan0

  Check the status:

  Code: Select all

  iwconfig
  inxi -Nnz

• Try to switch it off and back on and check the status:

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  sudo ifdown wlan0
  sudo ifup wlan0
  iwconfig
  inxi -Nnz

If all this should be to no avail, then I am out of ideas for the moment.

Cheers,
Karl

[Mordechai]

Karl,

The LCD has remained consistently blue. Why that is the case, I do not know.

I have performed the troubleshooting steps and here are the results:

sudo ifup wlan0-

Code: Select all

sudo: ifupwlan0: command not found

iwconfig
inxi -Nnz -

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              sean@Compaq ~/Desktop $ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          
eth0      no wireless extensions.

sean@Compaq ~/Desktop $ inxi -Nnz
Network:   Card-1: NVIDIA MCP67 Ethernet driver: forcedeth 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) driver: ath5k 
           IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter>

sudo ifdown wlan0
sudo ifup wlan0
iwconfig
inxi -Nnz -

Code: Select all

              sean@Compaq ~/Desktop $ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          
eth0      no wireless extensions.

sean@Compaq ~/Desktop $ inxi -Nnz
Network:   Card-1: NVIDIA MCP67 Ethernet driver: forcedeth 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) driver: ath5k 
           IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter>

I have noticed that while I am trying to enter a password or a network key that the 'connect' button will highlight if I type input a certain number of digits (9 digits or 13 digits) but the password is 14 digits long and therefore the connect button goes back to being greyed out.

[Mordechai]

Karl,

I just wanted to give you an update. I was able to use your help / advice here in conjunction with some outside help in mIRC to get it working. Thank you for your help!

[JeremyB]

Karl,

I just wanted to give you an update. I was able to use your help / advice here in conjunction with some outside help in mIRC to get it working. Thank you for your help!

Can you post the steps you took to fix and mark the post by editing the topic in your original post to include SOLVED? It might help someone else with the same issue

[Mordechai]

Karl,

I just wanted to give you an update. I was able to use your help / advice here in conjunction with some outside help in mIRC to get it working. Thank you for your help!

Can you post the steps you took to fix and mark the post by editing the topic in your original post to include SOLVED? It might help someone else with the same issue

Yes. I don't have the mIRC logs but this is what I was told to do:

• I was told to go to my connection icon in the bottom right corner and erase any previous wireless connections that I had.
• After that, click on the connection icon a second time and go to 'Create New Wireless Network' (it is the second option from the bottom) and manually put your connection information in.
• If it hangs up on step #2, erase the connection information again and reboot. Then do step 2 again.

What it boils down to is that the connection gump that I had listed in that image becomes buggy after my device loses power. I couldn't put my full network key into the default gump that pops up after my device regained its power. Or, that's how it was explained to me by someone else who said they had the same issue.

I've tested it a second time and it does seem like something weird goes on with the gump after my battery dies.