Wifi drops regularly and driver not working

thbrown · Post by **thbrown** » Sun Nov 29, 2015 6:47 pm

This is a similar question to those posted before but I've been unable to follow those threads to a successful conclusion so I've started a new thread.

I've had issues with the wifi ever since switching to mint. Wifi remains connected according to Network Manager but the internet drops after anything between 10 seconds and half a day. Most of the time restarting Network Manager and Wifi will reconnect but sometimes a full reboot is required.

There are a heap of other devices using the router and they have no problems so doubt very much it's that. I've also tried switching to Wicd and the problem persisted so I don't think it's network manager.
Switching to the broadcom propietary driver bcmwl-kernel-source using Driver Manager removes the wireless option from Network Manager completely so that's no good.

I am using a Lenovo U310 with Kernel: 4.3.0-040300-generic x86_64 (64 bit), Desktop: Cinnamon 2.6.13, Distro: Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela.

Any help would be very useful, I'm not bad with linux but I've run out of ideas. Below are some diagnostic outputs that might be useful...

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$ sudo /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintWifi/mintWifi.py
[sudo] password for thbrown: 
-------------------------
* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
  -- Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
      ==> PCI ID = 14e4:4727 (rev 01)
-------------------------
* II. querying ndiswrapper...
-------------------------
* III. querying iwconfig...
eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"OPTUS_A102B5"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:37:B7:A1:02:B6   
          Bit Rate=65 Mb/s   Tx-Power=27 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=54/70  Signal level=-56 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:2151  Invalid misc:529   Missed beacon:0

lo        no wireless extensions.

-------------------------
* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 04:7d:7b:b7:46:b6  
          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)

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:510 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:510 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:58910 (58.9 KB)  TX bytes:58910 (58.9 KB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr c0:18:85:d2:e2:8b  
          inet addr:192.168.0.2  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::c218:85ff:fed2:e28b/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:74761 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:48695 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:98893592 (98.8 MB)  TX bytes:6790760 (6.7 MB)

-------------------------
* V. querying DHCP...
RTNETLINK answers: File exists
-------------------------
* VI. querying nslookup google.com...
Server:		192.168.0.1
Address:	192.168.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.35
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.24
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.40
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.39
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.34
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.54
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.25
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.50
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.20
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.55
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.49
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.45
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.59
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.29
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.30
Name:	google.com
Address: 198.142.187.44

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$ modinfo wl

says there's no wl module to be found.

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$ dpkg -l | grep bcmwl

doesn't find bcmwl.

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$ dkms status
ndiswrapper, 1.59, 3.16.0-38-generic, x86_64: installed (WARNING! Diff between built and installed module!)
virtualbox-guest, 4.3.34, 4.3.0-040300-generic, x86_64: installed

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$ lspci -vv -s 03:00.0
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device 0587
	Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 18
	Region 0: Memory at f0500000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge

Post by **JeremyB** » Sun Nov 29, 2015 7:29 pm

Can you tell us what your network connection name is and post the result of

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iwlist scan | egrep -i 'essid|cipher'

thbrown · Post by **thbrown** » Sun Nov 29, 2015 8:25 pm

Thanks for the quick response.

By connection name do you mean provider?
if so...

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$ nm-tool | grep \*
  Wireless Access Points (* = current AP)
    *OPTUS_A102B5:   Infra, 00:37:B7:A1:02:B6, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 100 WPA2

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$ iwlist scan | egrep -i 'essid|cipher'
eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

                    ESSID:"OPTUS_A102B5"
                        Group Cipher : CCMP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP

Post by **JeremyB** » Thu Dec 03, 2015 8:12 pm

You may have to blacklist a couple drivers to keep them from loading

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sudo apt-get install linux-firmware
echo "blacklist b43" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

reboot and see if wifi works, if not post the result from

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lscpi -nnk | grep -iA2 net

thbrown · Post by **thbrown** » Tue Dec 08, 2015 7:38 pm

Thanks. Unfortunately that didn't do it, the wifi is still dropping very regularly.

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$ lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 05)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:3975]
	Kernel driver in use: r8169
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:0587]
	Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge

Post by **JeremyB** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 7:26 am

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echo "blacklist ssb" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Reboot

If it doesn't work correctly after the reboot, try booting into an older kernel as there might be some issue with the 4.3 kernel

Post by **JeremyB** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 7:49 pm

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2306152

thbrown · Post by **thbrown** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 8:02 pm

That seems to have solved the issue. Many thanks.

xdicey · Post by **xdicey** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 10:39 pm

thbrown wrote:That seems to have solved the issue. Many thanks.

thbrown, can you say which of these solved the wifi dropping problem?

This
echo "blacklist ssb" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

or this

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2306152

thbrown · Post by **thbrown** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:32 am

They do the same thing - that is blacklist the ssb and, in the second case, b43 driver modules. I'm not sure if only one or both drivers were causing the issue but with both blacklisted the wifi now works. Perhaps JeremyB can provide some hint as to why?

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echo -e "blacklist b43\nblacklist ssb" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-broadcom.conf
sudo rfkill unblock all

follows by a reboot should do the trick.

T.

xdicey · Post by **xdicey** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 1:40 pm

thbrown wrote:They do the same thing - that is blacklist the ssb and, in the second case, b43 driver modules. I'm not sure if only one or both drivers were causing the issue but with both blacklisted the wifi now works. Perhaps JeremyB can provide some hint as to why?
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echo -e "blacklist b43\nblacklist ssb" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-broadcom.conf
sudo rfkill unblock all
follows by a reboot should do the trick.

T.

Thanks

. Hope JeremyB can add his bit.

Post by **JeremyB** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 5:52 pm

Basically b43 and the bcrmfmac or bcrmsmac and trying to support the same hardware which causes a conflict. Sometimes it isn't necessary to blacklist ssb also and with certain ethernet cards it is actually needed

xdicey · Post by **xdicey** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:53 pm

JeremyB wrote:Basically b43 and the bcrmfmac or bcrmsmac and trying to support the same hardware which causes a conflict. Sometimes it isn't necessary to blacklist ssb also and with certain ethernet cards it is actually needed

uh? Alrighty then

.

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