Wireless quit with no warning or reason -- need help re-establishing it

Asked by E. Mark Mitchell

I have an Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01), according to my system. When I first got Ubuntu, about a year ago, I had a devil of a time getting it rolling. But I finally managed, using wicd. It worked well for a while, despite having to go through a manual reset every time the kernel was updated.

However, about a week ago, it suddenly ceased for no explicable reason (in the midst of browsing, no less), and now it cannot find any wireless networks whatsoever. The manual reset procedure was ineffective. I've basically been on network cable for a week, and not only is that annoying just around the house, that's really not going to fly when I visit my parents for the holidays. They have a wireless router, but it is useless to me if my machine can't detect networks at all.

I therefore need assistance in getting my wireless up and running again. If there's some sort of flaw in my wicd, I have no problem whatsoever in finding another methodology. Tell me how to get whatever data you need, and I'll cut and paste anything you want to know about my system.

Word about interaction: I'm familiar with most computer concepts, I can follow a basic discussion, but when it comes to actual programming, I make a good user. I only know what little about Ubuntu commands I've had to pick up, and most of that is pretty rusty. So feel free to translate any instructions into Captain Dummy talk. However, I have been talked through things like this before, so I'm not a total newbie to the ideas we're discussing, just the actual practice.

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A. Denton (aquina) said :
#1

So my question what you already did to descover it yourself? ;-)

1] Check with "sudo lspci", "sudo lsmod" to figure out wether your card was detected and the module is loaded. Recently made a BIOS change?

2] Have a look at your logs in /var/log especially try "sudo nano /var/log/messages". Is there something which indicates why your card failed? Especially look at the boot process (the timestamps give you orientation)!

3] Can you see your adapter with "sudo ifconfig -a"? And what about "sudo ifconfig" (without -a)? Are the settings correct? Have you tried to restart the networking service manually ("sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart")?

4] Tell us your output of "uname -a", please and wheter you loaded some special kernel modules, chaneged something to your kernel (self compiled) or made other changes like these.

5] Further describe what you did to your lovely card. :D Tell us what recent changes you made to your system. You mentioned you were browsing. Whish you had checked your router logs back then... :-(

Ever tried to test the adapter in a different system or to run the manufacturers NIC check utility (bootable floppy with utility on it)? Finally I'd consider buying a new NIC and replace the old (maybe damaged) one. That's often a cheaper method...

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E. Mark Mitchell (bbanzai123) said :
#2

All right, most of that is well above the basic level of discussion, but let me see if I can follow any of it.

1] sudo lspci, among other things, shows me:

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

so it seems to detect the card.

and sudo lsmod gives me a whole lot of things, but I don't know what module I'm looking for. There's several that start with "ath" but I don't know which ones are best. And I didn't make any BIOS changes; as I said, it just quit on me.

2] I tried that, but I have no idea what I was looking at, much less where to find what it's telling me about my card.

3] I put in the ifconfig -a and got:
ath0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1f:3a:26:8f:1f
          inet6 addr: fe80::21f:3aff:fe26:8f1f/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING 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:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

ath0:avahi Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1f:3a:26:8f:1f
          inet addr:169.254.3.221 Bcast:169.254.255.255 Mask:255.255.0.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1b:38:ff:2f:e3
          inet addr:192.168.1.103 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::21b:38ff:feff:2fe3/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:28780 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:30032 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:32407791 (30.9 MB) TX bytes:3564636 (3.3 MB)
          Interrupt:22 Base address:0x1000

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:16436 Metric:1
          RX packets:1752 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1752 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:87600 (85.5 KB) TX bytes:87600 (85.5 KB)

wifi0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-1F-3A-26-8F-1F-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:111 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:280
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:5546 (5.4 KB)
          Interrupt:22

I haven't tried the ifconfig without -a because I would have no idea what settings are correct or not. And I just did try the manual restart you gave me, but no change in the detection; it still doesn't read the 5 or so networks I can normally pick up in my apartment.

4] If I loaded any special kernel modules, it's news to me; I just did the recommended updates. But heres what happened with the uname command:

Linux little-sparky 2.6.24-25-generic #1 SMP Tue Oct 20 07:31:10 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

5] As far as I know, I did nothing to my card. I hadn't updated that day, there wouldn't have been any changes I made myself, since I don't do that. Other than the standard Ubuntu updates, nothing would have been altered since, far as I know, I initially got it set up a year ago. I was browsing my usual bulletin board sites; nothing special, nothing I don't browse literally every day. I just went to click to the next topic to read, and it came up unable to find the server, and I eventually realized that's because it couldn't detect the network anymore.

I'm not sure what you mean by test it on another system. It's a laptop, and all that's installed. That's why wireless is a bit more necessary; the network cable on the laptop really isn't very workable. I don't muck about with my hardware, if I can help it. The chipset came with the laptop, so I don't have any check utilities or the like.

Revision history for this message
A. Denton (aquina) said :
#3

Hy!

You run an LTS version which is great! :-)

1] No. 1] and 3] look absolutely normal to me which is fine.

2] I have to ask for No. 2 (/var/log/messages) again though. You can send it to <mylaunchpadname>@tron-delta.org for analysis. I hope you understand. ;-)

3] Can you open Synaptic and check the cronic to see which updates were installed during the last days and tell me those (esp. from the day when the card stopped working).

Nevertheless I think your card is dead. You'd rather buy some kind of a USB W-LAN adapter or check your notebooks warranty certificate. If I were you I'd boot from a different distribution live CD (e.g. Knoppix) though and check wether the card works with that.

Revision history for this message
E. Mark Mitchell (bbanzai123) said :
#4

Oh, I have no problem giving you the data, I just don't know exactly how to do it. Let me show you what happens when I do that "sudo nano /var/log/messages" command:

  GNU nano 2.0.7 File: /var/log/messages

Nov 13 06:28:35 little-sparky syslogd 1.5.0#1ubuntu1: restart.
Nov 13 06:29:24 little-sparky kernel: [23679.767880] eth0: link down
Nov 13 06:29:26 little-sparky kernel: [23681.893862] eth0: link down
Nov 13 06:29:26 little-sparky kernel: [23681.897213] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0:$
Nov 13 06:29:34 little-sparky exiting on signal 15
Nov 13 17:03:11 little-sparky syslogd 1.5.0#1ubuntu1: restart.
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: Inspecting /boot/System.map-2.6.24-25-gen$
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: Loaded 27929 symbols from /boot/System.ma$
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: Symbols match kernel version 2.6.24.
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: Loaded 18651 symbols from 89 modules.
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys$
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys$
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: [ 0.000000] Linux version 2.6.24-25-ge$
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM$
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000000000$
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc$
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000000e00$
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000001000$
Nov 13 17:03:12 little-sparky kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000003f4d20$
            [ line 1/3164 (0%), col 1/63 (1%), char 0/310453 (0%) ]
^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Page ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where Is ^V Next Page ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell

Yeah, I don't know what to do with the menu, you see, to give you what you need to know.

Same thing with the Synaptic cronic, actually. I'm not sure what the cronic is, but I see the menu option "history" and looking in there I see some things. Let's see, it was not this just past weekend, it was the weekend before... I'll just put the last few up there, all around that area, to be sure.

Commit Log for Fri Nov 13 17:45:20 2009

Upgraded the following packages:
tzdata (2009o+repack-0ubuntu0.8.04.2) to 2009r~repack-0ubuntu0.8.04
tzdata-java (2009o+repack-0ubuntu0.8.04.2) to 2009r~repack-0ubuntu0.8.04

Commit Log for Wed Nov 11 17:41:17 2009

Upgraded the following packages:
cupsys (1.3.7-1ubuntu3.5) to 1.3.7-1ubuntu3.6
cupsys-bsd (1.3.7-1ubuntu3.5) to 1.3.7-1ubuntu3.6
cupsys-client (1.3.7-1ubuntu3.5) to 1.3.7-1ubuntu3.6
cupsys-common (1.3.7-1ubuntu3.5) to 1.3.7-1ubuntu3.6
libcupsimage2 (1.3.7-1ubuntu3.5) to 1.3.7-1ubuntu3.6
libcupsys2 (1.3.7-1ubuntu3.5) to 1.3.7-1ubuntu3.6

Commit Log for Sat Nov 7 21:39:47 2009 (THIS WOULD BE ABOUT THE RIGHT DATE)

Upgraded the following packages:
libgd2-noxpm (2.0.35.dfsg-3ubuntu2) to 2.0.35.dfsg-3ubuntu2.1
libhtml-parser-perl (3.56-1) to 3.56-1ubuntu0.1

Commit Log for Mon Nov 2 14:34:46 2009

Upgraded the following packages:
firefox (3.0.14+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1) to 3.0.15+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
firefox-3.0 (3.0.14+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1) to 3.0.15+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
firefox-3.0-gnome-support (3.0.14+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1) to 3.0.15+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
firefox-gnome-support (3.0.14+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1) to 3.0.15+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
libsnmp-base (5.4.1~dfsg-4ubuntu4.2) to 5.4.1~dfsg-4ubuntu4.3
libsnmp15 (5.4.1~dfsg-4ubuntu4.2) to 5.4.1~dfsg-4ubuntu4.3
xulrunner-1.9 (1.9.0.14+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1) to 1.9.0.15+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support (1.9.0.14+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1) to 1.9.0.15+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1

And that's all I have for November.

Question: if my card is dead, is there a function test command I can enter to test that, or is that what you needed with the /var/log/messages results? It seems like that ought to be a question I should know, but I've never had to learn it so far, and that's how my computer knowledge works, sadly.

I can get hold of a USB adapter, of course, but that's clearly not an ideal solution (particularly given the placement of the ports on my machien). And the laptop is out of warranty; now I have to research how much getting the chipset replaced/repaired would cost... annoying. But that's no so much information as just public musings.

Revision history for this message
A. Denton (aquina) said :
#5

The only upgrade that has to do something with networking is the snmp package. I don't think it's the problems source though.

The test program comes from your manufacturer either on diskette or CD-ROM. Often it's also available for download on it's website. Sometimes there is simply no test utility offered. :-(

What you sent me from "/var/log/messages" is not enough. Please open the file in an editor and print it here or post it at http://pastebin.com/ and send us the link. I need the file to diagnose. It contains vital information from your systems core (the kernel).

Revision history for this message
E. Mark Mitchell (bbanzai123) said :
#6

Sorry, I had to be away from the house for a while; very frustrating.

Okay, well, the /var/log/messages command pulls up this menu, which I will recopy here:

  GNU nano 2.0.7 File: /var/log/messages

Nov 27 09:32:18 little-sparky syslogd 1.5.0#1ubuntu1: restart.
Nov 27 09:47:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 10:07:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 10:27:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 10:47:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 11:07:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 11:27:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 11:47:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 12:07:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 12:27:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 12:47:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 13:07:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 13:27:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 13:47:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 14:07:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 14:27:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 14:47:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 15:07:12 little-sparky -- MARK --
Nov 27 15:27:12 little-sparky -- MARK --

^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Page ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where Is ^V Next Page ^U UnCut Text ^T To Spell

This is, as you can see, different from before. I will now select the ^R, Read File command.

Okay, now it asks me what file to insert. And I have no idea what to put for that; I don't know what the files are called, and even if I did, I don't know which one you want.

See, you ask me to put the results of the command, and I do, and it's a different menu, and then you want the expanded list, and that's great, I want to give it to you, but I don't know how to summon up the data you're asking for. If you can tell me what I need to put in to give your the information you want, I'm quite happy to do so. Like I said up at the top, I follow directions well, and I'm familiar with many concepts, but I don't know commands or filenames. Please, by all means, tell me what to plug in, I'll do as you ask.

Revision history for this message
A. Denton (aquina) said :
#7

Hy Mark,

why don't you open the file "/var/log/messages" in an editor of your choice (one you regularly use and understand like e.g. mousepad), mark everything and copy it to http://pastebin.org/. There should be hundreds or thousands of lines in your post.

Revision history for this message
E. Mark Mitchell (bbanzai123) said :
#8

Oh, so it's a file! Okay, well, that worked much better.

Now, I put it in pastebin, and it's here: http://pastebin.org/59875

If you want me to do something else, like reboot without the network cable attached, or anything like that, tell me precisely what you want me to do.

Revision history for this message
A. Denton (aquina) said :
#9

Hy!

Sorry for being so late, but I'm a bit sick right now (got the flew). :-( I checked your messages log and haven't yet found anything unusual. In case you can't verify your hardware is broken (which I can't) for e.g. with a diagnostics software issued by your hardware manufacturer I suggest you [L1] to double check your installation. Maybe a packet upgrade indeed broke the driver and I didn't realize it.

[L1] http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/atheros-ar242x-howto/%23post-1594438&prev=_t

- Aquina

Revision history for this message
A. Denton (aquina) said :
#10

Can you tell us whether your system is still broken? I'd realy like to know!

Revision history for this message
A. Denton (aquina) said :
#11

Unfortunately I do not have the powers to change the state of this question to SOLVED, EXPIRED or INVALID. Someone here at Launchpad either grant me that permission or simply apply the change in state to this question, please.

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask E. Mark Mitchell for more information if necessary.

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