That wlan problem (yet again)

[Member roland]

My recently resolved (many thanks) freezing problem with 64bit 19.2 is sadly not the solution I hoped for as I have no wlan capability although if I carry the box downstairs I could plug in an ethernet cable.

Installing the release 19.2 incorporating kernel 4.19 has therefore introduced a known past problem, but after doing a forum search and attempting to read and digest all suggestions and proposed fixes I still feel no wiser, as there is so much and no definite fix that I can see although please correct me if there is one now.

As lack of internet capability is a dead stop I feel faced with installing 17.4.1 which I am now familiar with, and is a stable release. When a few months back I installed 19.1 on the laptop I am using to submit this post I hit this wlan problem and I confess I rapidly installed 17.4.1 to clear the problem, but I would prefer not to be so negative this time as there is no hurry for the new PC to be up and running.

Therefore, having read through a large volume of text and failed to be convinced there is a known fix, can anyone point me in the right direction please?

I can see my wlan in Ceni, and commect to it, Conky shows the up and down panels and I also see it in the taskbar, but Firefox nor Dillo see it and tell me there is no internet. Connman does not run at all after taking my password, it just vanishes. The up and down panels remain but are greyed out. I have as yet no PCIe lan card, I am using a Usb wlan adapter plugged into a Usb2 socket.

Thanks for all responses in advance for what many must think an old chestnut, The excuse I offer is I am 75 and a historical mainframe man (ICL/VME).

[Member Xecure]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I can’t remember the original thread. Was there a problem with installing antiX 19.3? Was it an amd graphics related issue?
Did you give us an inxi -Fxz output for this particular machine? As you don’t link the previous post, I don’t know what went on in that other topic you started without it.

I assume your CENI problems are related to not launching the antix-wifi-switch that eases the transition between connman and ceni, fixing and configuring all that needs to be configured, and that was included in antiX 19.3 (though it installs automatically if you upgrade from any previous 19.x version).

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Moderator caprea]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Yes, it sounds like you didn’t find the antix-wifi-switch.
menu > applications > antiX > antiX Wifi Switch

You might have to plug in an ethernet cable and do an dist-upgrade to get it available .

[Member ex_Koo]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I know how you feel with wifi and 19.2. ( antiX-19.2.1-runit_x64-base Hannie Schaft 29 March 2020 Linux antix1 5.8.16-antix.1-amd64-smp)
All I wanted was to use connman and now have it running with connman, but their is still something not right.
Can not get connman taskbar thingy to open with the red and green lights what ever, but connman-gtk opens and I can see the wifi networks and it was not connecting then connecting after a while then dropping out, I found that it was connecting to two wifi connections at the same time some Fon wifi and the one I wanted with password entered and saved, removed the Fon one and all is good.
If I open ceni all I see is text across the terminal and searching but never gets anywhere.

I can easily fix the above by removing connman and just using ceni as I have used ceni for many years, and its never let me down. But that not the point connman should be working by now.

[Member roland]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I used an ethernet cable to connect to the service provider and succeeded in updating 19.1 to what seems to be 19.2 as the antix wifi switch then appeared in the menu, ran that specifying Ceni to handle wifi connections. All seemed well as long as I used the ethernet cable to link to my internet adapter. There was no freezing which I had posted very recently.

Carting it back upstairs I found I could not dependably connect to the my wlan, I only have a USB wlan adapter until a PCIe wlan adapeter arrives. Ceni is misbehaving at times by racking all its messages over the terminal at top speed and freezing the mouse pointer, a persistent problem, the only way out is the reset button. Connman is not functionaL at all and there is no response from a left button press, not sure if it is indeed installed. Network Assistant is installed, but this PC is not yet functional enough for such experimentation.

I feel my earlier post about freezing is not yet resolved despite my installing kernel 4.19, but wireless network handling (Ceni?) seems to be provoking these freezes. I learned to keep clear of Connman and Wicd when I had similar network problems with 17.4.1 and stick with Ceni, not too sure now which direction I should move in, favourite seems to be to 17.4.1, and kernel 4.19, but I look forward to all suggestions please.

I attach a full inxi as a PDF, I’m not sure if the old forum restriction of / must be followed by space still applies? PDF gets round this.

Attachments:

1. inxi-zv8.pdf

[Member Xecure]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I must be drunk (and I have never drank in my life), and must be seeing things:

Memory: RAM: total: 31.35 GiB used: 416.6 MiB (1.3%)

Being more serious now. I cannot see any reason for freezing, but I am no hardware expert. Could you monitor hard drive writes (in conky or other viewer) to see if the freezing happens when writing to Hard Drive? The Hard drives are also enormous, but maybe they have some writing issues or sata cables are a bit defective. Maybe an expert can give thier view of the situation.

About wifi:

Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver:r8169
            v: kernel port: 7000 bus ID: 07:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8168
            IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
            Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver:r8169
            v: kernel port: 6000 bus ID: 09:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8168
            IF: eth1 state: down mac: <filter>
            WAN IP: No WAN IP data found. Connected to the web? SSL issues? 

There is no Wifi adapter connected or it isn’t properly detected by the system. Next time you connect it, check the output of
inxi -Nxxxz
and maybe
lsusb
to see if we can identify the problematic wifi device.

In my very irrelevant opinion, I would try to run the system with a frugal install and dynamic persistence to see if you also get the freezes. This would discard Hard Drive problems (if the freezes also ocurre on the frugal installation). And there is more RAM there than what my whole antiX system takes on its 20GB partition, so you can afford the experiment.

Also, why not install the latest antiX 4.19 kernel? I think the last one update is 4.19.152, while you are using 4.19.100. There are definitely more fixes in the most recent one.

Edit: is this correct?

Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: HUANANZHI model: X79 v: VAA1 serial: <filter>
            BIOS: American Megatrends v: 4.6.5 date: 07/07/2018 

Is the motherboard 2 years old or is this because of a recent BIOS update? I am not sure how motherboards are related to kernel drivers, but probably a 5.X kernel could help. Don’t follow this advice, and wait for a real expert to comment. You are using a 5-8 years old CPU on a 2 years old (based on BIOS date) motherboard, so I am not sure which is more relevant for the kernel controller. I don’t think updating to a 5.X kernel will hurt, but better to hear the advice of the experts.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Xecure. Reason: motherboard info
• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Xecure. Reason: Update CPU age

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member roland]

Helpful

Up

0

::

The mainboard may well be 2 years old by now, I bought it in UK in late 2018 and brought it to Spain with me, and have been building up this PC as I could afford the bits and pieces. The 2 cpus are a matched pair of Xeon cast-offs that could indeed be 5 years old, the memory is castoff server ram perhaps the same age. All other bits such as Sata cables and hard drives are new, this is their first use.

The download of 19.1 I used had kernel 4.19, I’m not sure how to locate and install the kernel you suggest (4.19.152) if it doesn’t appear in the kernel list presented by the package installer. In most respects I am very much a beginner although I’ve been an antiX user since the days of Luddite 13.1. That’s what happens when a product works well, one does not need to work at it so you learn next to nothing.

The full inxi was taken with the Usb wifi adapter unplugged, but it is a working unit by TP-Link, 150Mbps type TL-WN722N plugged into either a 3.0 or 2.1 Usb port.

This PC behaves as one would wish when connected via the ethernet cable which is most inconveniently located downstairs. I feel as if the trouble is caused by wifi, mainly Ceni but as it is severe I can do little to change things when connected. When the mouse pointer freezes the pc is still working, I can see the activity lights on the wifi adapter and hard drive flashing, and see the conky disk activity. It usually un-freezes itself after a long pause (30 secs or more) or if I succeed in causing an interrupt.

Thanks for your observations.

[Member ex_Koo]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Connman works just fine now was just the connecting to two wifi’s that was stopping it from working for me.
Plus I install cmst really like this looks great and has heaps of info too.

Take no notice of my above post just a bad hair day or just forgot my brain moment. Reading helps too. %-/

[Member Xecure]

Helpful

Up

0

::

If possible, try downloading the latest 19.3 iso with 4.19 kernel from cica (Andalucia/Spain):
https://ftp.cica.es/mirrors/Linux/MX-ISOs/ANTIX/Final/antiX-19/4.19_kernel/antiX-19.3_x64-full.iso

If you cannot use a USB stick to install and can only use a CD, let me know and I will try to make a base iso smaller.

roland wrote:

I’m not sure how to locate and install the kernel you suggest (4.19.152) if it doesn’t appear in the kernel list presented by the package installer.

It is somewhat difficult to see in the package installer, you are right. This is the way to see the version that will be installed:

But first try booting the linked iso live and see if on a live session connecting to wifi also freezes the computer.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member roland]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Thanks Xecure, I’ll give kernel 4.19.152 a go. I am cautious about where I download from or which repos I use, since I got into a mess a couple of years ago when an update using Spanish repos seemed to cause a mix of Spanish and English text here and there, half the menus were in English and the rest in Spanish. So now I stick to a mirror in Coventry which is very fast so I cause them minimal nuisance. I was born in Coventry.

[Member roland]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I have installed kernel 4.19.152 after a struggle with freezes and trouble with Ceni.

When running offline, not connected to the wlan, the PC behaves well, showing no sign of difficulty, freezes, or other misbehaviour of any kind.
When connected to my wlan it is almost impossible to do anything at all, the mouse pointer freezes, windows multiply and lines of text rack over the terminal at speed.
In the background when frozen I can see in the Htop window I left that the Cpus are not frozen and jobs run apparently normally.

I conclude the problem is entirely related to wireless networking. Network Assistant is in there somewhere, I tried to apt-get remove it but do not know the package name, it is not NetworkAssistant nor networkassistant. I suspect this package is interfering with Ceni in some way.

[Member Xecure]

Helpful

Up

0

::

My guess is that it is the wireless adapter.
The freezes must be thousands of lines of errors being logged because the system cannot communicate properly with the device. Or you need to unblacklist a certain kernel module (using the network assistant) or it simply is a faulty device.
If you could share the inxi -Nxxx output from the device, we could learn if this specific model is problematic. But maybe it is just the one you have or the USB connection. As you said you tried on both USB 3 and 2, then my guess is that it is the adapter itself.

We may move faster if you can share the inxi information related to the wireless device.

roland wrote:

I conclude the problem is entirely related to wireless networking. Network Assistant is in there somewhere,

Networks assistant will not launch if you don’t launch it. It isn’t a network manager, but a tool to ping and make network checks, blacklist and unblacklist modules, etc.

Uninstalling it won’t help.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member roland]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Yes I’ll provide that information tomorrow, although it is only 2 or 3 years old and has seen very little use. The Usb wlan adapter is an interim workaround, I am awaiting a Pci-e wlan adapter card, but Covid-19 is slowing up deliveries. I am also awaiting a new UK keyboard and mouse, I had experience in the past with dud keyboards causing mayhem through sending rogue keystrokes.

Network assistant is installed (I don’t recall installing it) but does nothing after receiving my root password, the user password is rejected in the usual way, but after accepting the root password – silence, however the PC when connected to the wlan isn’t stable enough to depend on doing anything. I could connect via ethernet cable but that is concealing the problem.

Where can I find the real (internal) package names? The names they are referred to in menus is sometimes not the same, and apt-get doesn’t understand package names 2 words long.

Thanks for your involvement.

[Member Xecure]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Network assistant is useful for testing the network connection (ping, see wireless driver used, blacklist or unblacklist drivers, install windows drivers, etc.). It shouldn’t be doing anything to reduce wireless performance.

I normally launch it from the Control Centre, under Maintenance, using my user password.

For searching for installed packages, if using antiX full, search the name in synaptic package manager.
If you are on antiX based, use the command apt search.
See the example above (in the image).
apt search <words>
will search for all available packages whith a name or description including those <words>
grep installed for only displaying installed packages
The end result for searching for network assistant:

$ apt search network assistant | grep installed
network-assistant/buster,now 0.1.4 amd64 [installed]

The package name is network-assistant

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member roland]

Helpful

Up

0

::

This morning the PC seems to be running in a stable manner, and I was able to apt-get remove wicd connman and network assistant.

It has now run an hour without any freezing looping or rogue keystrokes, in other words normal, so at present I am inclined to give it a clean bill of health.

Maybe the problem has been entirely some conflict between the several network handlers? Installing kernel 4.19.152 appeared to make a fundamental difference, but as there were 4 network handlers installed at the time who knows what the real reason was? I am too inexperienced to forward an opinion.

Thanks for all your suggestions and support. It is most valuable to have experienced advice and suggestions when these problems surface, and this being a new hardware build, with differences, and for me a new antiX version migration, I did expect trouble at the outset.

I shall be posting a description of the build in the hardware forum when I have the text and photos finalised, as this was not just an assembly of bits and pieces, but I’m sure many will find it of interest.

Attachments:

1. 

   conky_htop.jpg
   

2. 

   conky_wlan.jpg
   

1. inxi_full.pdf

[Author]

Posts