WLAN/Bluetooth Card Continual Disconnects Block Function.

[Member stevesr0]

Hi all,

(UPDATE: details of rfkill lists and effects – see details below bottom line.)

BOTTOM LINE:
I can’t use my built wireless card (a combo Wifi and Bluetooth Intel 4965) because of a stream of error messages that interfere with function). With the physical wireless switch turned OFF, I can use a usb wifi dongle OK. I think I either have a problem with rfkill, with the intel firmware, other bluetooth packages that I haven’t installed or a combination of these. Appreciate hearing any suggestions to diagnose and fix.

Thanks in advance.

stevesr0

Details:

I am running an originally minimal Sid install which I have now increased by the addition of a “mild” Openbox based GUI and just attempted to enable the built in wireless, which is a combo wifi and Bluetooth card (Intel 4965).

However, when this is enabled, I get a continual stream of error messages (“unexpected event for opcode 0x0000”) which fill the screen in CLI mode and interfere with function when I am running X. “Rfkill block bluetooth” doesn’t help. If I disable the card completely USING THE PHYSICAL SWITCH and use a wifi USB dongle, I don’t get these errors and I can connect fine to the internet.

With former installs of Antix, I was able to use the built in wifi, so I am not sure what is causing the problem.

I didn’t have Bluetooth packages installed prior to attempting to enable wifi (using ceni). I have installed all the bluetooth related packages that seem necessary after this problem surfaced.

Perhaps one clue that I am not able to make sense of is that rfkill isn’t “reading” the block correctly when I have the physical switch turned off and on. (I will have to check this after I post this message and add the actual listings).

UPDATE – RFKILL list results:

Physical switch OFF:
phy0: Soft Block NO, Hard Block YES
phy1: Soft Block NO, Hard Block NO
(No Bluetooth line)

Physical switch ON:
phy0: Soft Block YES, Hard Block NO
phy1: Soft Block YES, Hard Block NO
Bluetooth: Soft Block YES, Hard Block NO

Have explored this on the internet. Have not seen a discussion of a similar problem.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by stevesr0.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Brian Masinick. Reason: Title change

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi pls tell us what you are using to try and connect, connman or ceni. That is important as rfkill
is a no go with connman, i.e. it does not work with it.

[Member stevesr0]

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ceni.

connman isn’t installed.

[Member Xecure]

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@stevesr0
Your issue requires a lot of information, like the Device ID, what firmware you have installed, the Bluetooth packages installed, kernel version, etc.
I think it will be quicker for you to compare with a live antiX Linux full edition (even if it is not SID), just to see what drivers are used (to figure out the packages you need), see if everything works OK with ceni+blueman with that specific wireless chip. Starting fro net or core requires a lot of knowledge and experience, and even more if you run with Debian sid repos.

Start with a working system, understand how it is working, and then return to the sid based and compare behavior.
lspci -nnk
Will give you info on each pci device (including the device ID) and what kernel driver they are using. you can use the device ID in linuxhardware to see what kernels versions support the device and what driver they use (and if they require blacklisting some drivers or not).
You may need to check dmesg error messages to see if the driver is expecting to find a firmware file and can’t, or if the driver loads with an error, etc.
Compare all things between the live working system and your sid+net system. If a firmare is missing in one, figure out what package has it in the working system
dpkg -S /path/to/firmware.fw
Where the firmware name is provided by the dmesg error.

There is a lot of work involved, so see how far you can figure out and let us know when you encounter a block, with some more detail. This will be faster than waiting for someone here to start guessing how your system is set up and play a hit-and-miss game.

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

[Member stevesr0]

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Hi Xecure,

Thanks for the detailed response. I will get back to you after trying out your suggestions.

stevesr0

[Member stevesr0]

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(UPDATE: after rebooting and carefully messing with various files (/etc/network/interfaces, /etc/resolv.conf [thru /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/base)and figuring out how to paste my network passphrase into the ceni/wpa_supplicant screen), the SMCWUSB-N3 wifi adapter did connect to my network and I have internet access via wifi on the “afflicted” system. Parenthetically, I realize that rt3070.bin is distinct from the driver rt2800usb.

My remaining issue with this system is to determine if the internal card (combo wifi/bluetooth) is broken. When I have time, I will try other linux distros, since neither of the recent antix ones I tried have worked with the internal card.

I remain open to suggestions for how I might check the integrity of the hardware. When I have stepped away for awhile, I will search online for hardware tests that I might attempt.)

Hi,

Previous posting earlier this morning hasn’t shown up, so I am reposting.

Trying to follow Xecure’s suggestions, I have used two USB sticks – one with a full Antix 17 and one with a full Antix 19, my two other laptops (a Lenovo Yoga 11e and an Opowered LP-1 [gaming laptop from Walmart])
as “controls” to assure that the distros and the sticks were OK.

On the Lenovo, both sticks worked fine including wifi.

On the Opowered laptop, the 19.4 distro boots to a command line instead of the GUI. I tried “startx”, but received a “server refused connection” error. Just not sure how to follow that up.
The 17.4 distro booted to X directly. The touchpad didn’t work, but a USB mouse did. It connected to the internet after I edited /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/base (which was empty) and added a nameserver.

My sense at this time is that the internal wireless is broken and I need to try an external dongle that has linux support. I am having trouble getting this laptop to recognize the one I have which uses the Ralink 2800 driver (rt3070.bin). Maybe only because I haven’t installed it properly (used apt and installed the miscellaneous firmware nonfree package).

I need to work on other stuff for a while and will post again after I get some time to explore further.

stevesr0

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by stevesr0.

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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With my internal bluetooth . I usually start out with bios to see if it is enabled 1st before moving on to check on other things.

Maybe lsusb -t might give some luck here as far as listing driver used and if operating system sees it.

I know dmesg | tail

Might mention something also.

I also use

inxi -v8

to get usb info also. I usually post in a thread pertinent info before asking a question. Something I do rarely here anymore.

Good luck.

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Member stevesr0]

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Thanks, rokytnji for the additional suggestions.

I was originally motivated to post because I was curious about the continuous stream of the same opcode error. When I attempted to look up what it referred to specifically, I got no where. I posted thinking someone might have a simple answer.

As usual, answers are not simple.

At this point, I don’t have a problem with the usb wifi dongle – it is working ok on the “afflicted” laptop.

I will try to use dmesg and some other utilities I am reading about to make sense of the status of the built in wireless card.

As I noted in my previous message, I will be tied up with other stuff for a while. I will repost when I have done some more work on this.

stevesr0

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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Yeah. I am not hip on the latest hardware but I do know some newer gear includes bluetooth in the wireless card area. Combo wireless N/Bluetooth.

I see the cards for sell on newegg but they are desktop computer cards instead of laptop cards.

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Member stevesr0]

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Short update.

I have identified the hardware and the firmware, following the suggestions of Xecure and rokytnji. In dmesg, on one occasion, I noted the comment “kernel bug at drivers/net/wireless/intel/iwlegacy/common.c:2350!”. This caused me to look up kernel bug reports involving iwlwifi and there have been a number of them.

Following hints others have tried to get their wlan/bluetooth combo cards working, I tried to prevent concurrent bluetooth and wlan use by creating an /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf file with the line “options iwlwifi bt_coex_active=0, swcrypto=1 11n_disable=8” and and a file /etc/modprobe.d/99-local.conf with the single line “options iwlwifi enable_ini=0”.

Of note the iwlwifi supporters note that firmware for devices that require iwldvm (which I think this card does) is NOT supported. Unfortunately, nothing has worked in terms of shutting off the continual messages.

I was able to get ceni on a few occasions to recognize wireless networks, but never connect. I think what happens is the continual stream of enabling and disabling of the firmware and the stream of opcode 00 x 0000 errors simply block functioning. Ultimately, I generally have to shutdown the power to bring the computer down, whenever I enable the card.

I tried using the original Windows XP hard drive that was installed with the machine and was able to get various wireless networks recognized, but in that OS, the maximum security is WPA and I am using WPA2 on my wireless access point. I haven’t found a way to check if the card is misbehaving in the same way as it does in linux, but I didn’t have any loss of control (except perhaps for intermittent sounds for no reason (that I eventually muted) and was able to shutdown normally.

So, I guess I will put this aside for awhile, hoping that a new version of firmware or other kernel modules results in a restoration of function. In the meantime, I can use ethernet and a usb wireless card.

I am posting in the unlikely case that this might be useful to someone else.

(I thought about opening the laptop up to see if the connections were problematic, but the one time I did that it was a VERY involved process and this promises to be the same. And my efforts to fix the internal card are mainly to learn something, which to some slight degree <g> I think I have.)

stevesr0

[Member Robin]

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Good morning @stevesr0

stevesr0 wrote:

but in that OS, the maximum security is WPA and I am using WPA2 on my wireless access point.

Even if we are a true antiX bord here 🙂 you’ll get some advice for Windows also, so you might check out whether your device is operating fine still:
You must have missed some Windows updates, since WinXP connects fine to WPA2 WLANs from SP2 onwards. I have even had run this WPA2 on Windows2000prof., but for 2000 you’ll depend on the drivers your device manufacturer provides, while WinXP was updated to WPA2 by Microsoft itself. So just install the correct patch from their site and you should be able to connect your WPA2 WLAN from within WinXP for testing.

No download available anymore? Well, another lesson in terms of what it does actually mean to rely on proprietary software…

You may check wayback machine to access the driver update needed for your machine, but I believe Microsoft will let you stand in the rain with your system nowadays, since they keep you from updating simply by having stopped their so called “genuine test” facility. The correct file name to search for you’ll learn from the download description at archive.org.

Besides, do I recollect correctly, wasn’t there a kind of wrapper available, making it possible to use true windows driver files within linux for WLAN access? In this case you simply need to copy the drivers from within your Windows XP, once you’ve managed to make it run on WPA2, to antiX and mount them using this wrapper. I’m quite sure I’ve used this ugly technique successfully many years ago myself on a machine running Sidux.

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Member stevesr0]

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Hi robin,

Thanks for response.

Today, I was able to test the wifi in Win XP by temporarily setting up an unsecured guest network. After fiddling around with uninstalling and reinstalling the wireless in Device Manager, the windows connection utility displayed the guest network and I was able to (allegedly) connect. I say allegedly because I couldn’t ping anything while supposedly connected. While the connection speed was described as “excellent”, it disconnected at intervals for no obvious reason.

So, unless I can find (or someone suggests) a way to display messages in Windows the way dmesg does in linux, I am not sure what else I can do to determine if this is a linux software/firmware problem or a hardware issue without opening the box and either finding an obvious problem or trying to directly test the device.

stevesr0

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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Been ages for me since Windows 2000 but I seem to remember task manager was it’s dmesg readout.

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Member stevesr0]

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Hi rokytnji,

I think that provides info on running processes (like top). I found a mention of an event viewer and a utility tracerpt. But at the moment, I am not sure how to use them or if they provide the same sort of info as dmesg.

stevesr0

[Member ModdIt]

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Lateral thinkers way,
is the card plugged not soldered to the board, trash it before you get grey hair. After wasting days on my EEPC wifi I replaced the card and was rewarded with immediate stable connection.
For non replaceable cards, if you have a spare usb port a wifi stick is a way out of misery and time wasting. i sometimes plug in one with dual antenne, way better performance than internal.

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