Mint 17 freezes connecting to Wifi with USB network adapter.

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revblk

Mint 17 freezes connecting to Wifi with USB network adapter.

Post by revblk »

Hi folks,
My project yesterday was to create a dual-boot Windows 7 64bit/Linux Mint 17 64bit machine. The OSes are on separate hard drives. Mint is first in boot priority and OS selection is handled with grub, as one would expect.

Everything went perfectly save for one problem: no wifi, though this was somewhat expected.
I have an internal NIC, but I this tower lives in a different room that the router, making jacking into the router infeasible for long periods of time.
Under Windows 7, the solution has been to use a USB Network Adapter I had lying around. Specifically the D-Link 142.
I started googling the problem and these are the steps I took:
1. Download relevant drivers. There were four: Windows XP/Win XP 64bit/Vista/Vista 64bit.
2. Install ndisgtk
3. Install drivers with ndisgtk
ndisgtk threw the following error: modprobe:FATAL:Module ndiswrapper not found
After closing the error, the Vista drivers were marked as Invalid, but the XP drivers were marked as Installed with Hardware Present.
4. more googling to find a solution to the modprobe:FATAL error.
5. Installed ndiswrapper-dkms
6. Ran

Code: Select all

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
in the terminal
7. Reinstalled the drivers. Joy! Installing the XP 64 bit driver results in Wifi being an available in Network Settings, and the computer sees locally broadcasting networks!
8. Try to connect to my local 2.4GHz b/g/n, auto channel, WPA2-PSK[AES] network.
Every time I do this, the network settings shows that it is attempting to connect, and then the entire system freezes. No Keyboard, no mouse; nothing.
9. Hard reboot.
10. Try to fiddle with the connection settings, same result.

Here is a list of the ndiswrapper related packages I have installed:
mintwifi
ndisgtk
ndiswrapper-dkms
ndiswrapper-common
ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

And here is the result of running

Code: Select all

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

-------------------------
* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
-------------------------
* II. querying ndiswrapper...
netmw246 : driver installed
device (07D1:3B10) present
-------------------------
* III. querying iwconfig...
eth0 no wireless extensions.

lo no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Channel:0 Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s Sensitivity=-200 dBm
RTS thr=2346 B Fragment thr=2346 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

-------------------------
* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:24:81:86:0c:1b
inet6 addr: fe80::224:81ff:fe86:c1b/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:92051 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:41090 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:116965896 (116.9 MB) TX bytes:4650913 (4.6 MB)

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:1798 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1798 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:180287 (180.2 KB) TX bytes:180287 (180.2 KB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:17:9a:51:32:48
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)

-------------------------
* V. querying DHCP...
-------------------------
* VI. querying nslookup google.com...
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

Any help you fine folks can offer would be greatly appreciated. Just tell me what you need me to run in the terminal and I'll post it here.
Thanks!
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
revblk

Re: Mint 17 freezes connecting to Wifi with USB network adap

Post by revblk »

UPDATE:
I have tried installing linux-headers-generic and linux-firmware-nonfree on a recommendation, but neither had an effect.
I also tried changing the encryption settings of the router from WPA2-PSK [AES] to WPA-PSK [TKIP] + WPA2-PSK [AES], but that too had no effect.
Rusty1

Re: Mint 17 freezes connecting to Wifi with USB network adap

Post by Rusty1 »

If you are serious about using Mint or any other linux, best to get a USB wirelss device that is supported out of the box. They are not expensive.
revblk

Re: Mint 17 freezes connecting to Wifi with USB network adap

Post by revblk »

You're right about that, and as soon as I can afford one, I probably will.
In the meantime, this is what I'm stuck with.
AlbertP
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Posts: 6701
Joined: Sun Jan 30, 2011 12:38 pm
Location: Utrecht, The Netherlands

Re: Mint 17 freezes connecting to Wifi with USB network adap

Post by AlbertP »

That's a wifi adapter with a Marvell chip in it. One of the very few adapters which has no native Linux driver, and they're so uncommon that the ndiswrapper people probably don't regularly encounter them either (there is fairly good ndiswrapper support for a few otherwise unsupported Broadcom USB devices).

ndiswrapper has a wiki at http://sourceforge.net/p/ndiswrapper/nd ... Main_Page/, perhaps it includes some useful information related to your device or the Marvell 88W8362 chip. There's also a help forum.
I must say the website looked & worked considerably better in the past, for some reason the wiki is hard to find nowadays and some information is hidden behind a (free) SourceForge login.

(This page tells me your device is based on the Marvell 88W8362)
Registered Linux User #528502
Image
Feel free to correct me if I'm trying to write in Spanish, French or German.
revblk

Re: Mint 17 freezes connecting to Wifi with USB network adap

Post by revblk »

Thank you so much Albert! I'll take a look through these resources.
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