I'm running Sid on my ThinkPad X200s, and after an `aptitude upgrade`
the WiFi is experiencing intermittent problems. Pretty sure it's not
the hardware, as I've never experienced these issues before and this
started happening exactly after the upgrade.

It's an Intel Ultimate N 5300 WiFi card:

% lspci | grep WiFi
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300

Sometimes it works:

% iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSIDff/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=0 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Power Managementff

% rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no

Sometimes it doesn't work:

% iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.

% sudo iwconfig wlan0 txpower on ; sudo ifup wlan0
Error for wireless request "Set Tx Power" (8B27) :
GET failed on device wlan0 ; No such device.
Could not read interface wlan0 flags: No such device
Failed to initialize driver interface
Failed to bring up wlan0.

% rfkill list
(blank - nothing listed)

This uses the iwlagn driver, tried to remove & re-add it:

% sudo rmmod iwlagn
Error: Module iwlagn is in use

The relevant firmware package is up to date:

% apt-show-versions firmware-iwlwifi
firmware-iwlwifi/sid uptodate 0.35

I'm wondering if a more up-to-date Kernel might solve the problem:

% uname -a
Linux ... 2.6.38-grml #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue May 24 15:10:58 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

...but `aptitude install linux-image-686-pae` wants to upgrade
perl-base from 5.12.3-6 to 5.14.2-10, which in turn wants to remove
440 packages.

Any suggestions regarding how to get WiFi working again would be much
appreciated.

John

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John Magolske
http://B79.net/contact


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On Thu, 10 May 2012 19:02:30 -0700, John Magolske wrote:

> I'm running Sid on my ThinkPad X200s, and after an `aptitude upgrade`
> the WiFi is experiencing intermittent problems. Pretty sure it's not the
> hardware, as I've never experienced these issues before and this started
> happening exactly after the upgrade.

(...)

> Sometimes it doesn't work:
>
> % iwconfig
> lo no wireless extensions.
> eth0 no wireless extensions.

(...)

> This uses the iwlagn driver, tried to remove & re-add it:
>
> % sudo rmmod iwlagn
> Error: Module iwlagn is in use

(...)

lsmod | grep iwlagn

Wifi driver modules usually depend on others and you have to remove all
of them to satisfy their dependencies and they can be unloaded
successfully (as root, "modinfo iwlagn | grep depends" will tell you more
about this).

> I'm wondering if a more up-to-date Kernel might solve the problem:
>
> % uname -a
> Linux ... 2.6.38-grml #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue May 24 15:10:58 UTC
> 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

(...)

Mmm, why is that you are using such an old kernel? :-?

Greetings,

--
Camaleón


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My problem was resolved with an `aptitude dist-upgrade` which removed
some obsolete packages and allowed new things to get upgraded,
including a new kernel. I was being cautious with `aptitude upgrade`
and `aptitude safe-upgrade`, but now I see the value of dist-upgrade.

* Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> [120512 22:23]:
> On Thu, 10 May 2012 19:02:30 -0700, John Magolske wrote:
>
> > I'm running Sid on my ThinkPad X200s, and after an `aptitude upgrade`
> > the WiFi is experiencing intermittent problems. Pretty sure it's not the
> > hardware, as I've never experienced these issues before and this started
> > happening exactly after the upgrade.
> > [...]
>
> lsmod | grep iwlagn
>
> Wifi driver modules usually depend on others and you have to remove all
> of them to satisfy their dependencies and they can be unloaded
> successfully (as root, "modinfo iwlagn | grep depends" will tell you more
> about this).

Thanks for the tip. Not sure what this would've looked like before the
dist-upgrade state...but now it's like so:

% lsmod | grep iwlagn
% modinfo iwlagn | grep depends
depends: mac80211,cfg80211
% modinfo iwlagn | grep -A 1 filename
filename: /lib/modules/3.2.0-2-686-pae/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi.ko
alias: iwlagn

... looks like iwlagn is now an alias to the iwlwifi module, which has
replaced iwlagn as of Linux 3.2. In any case, WiFi is working fine now.

> > % uname -a
> > Linux ... 2.6.38-grml #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue May 24 15:10:58 UTC
> > 2011 i686 GNU/Linux
>
> (...)
>
> Mmm, why is that you are using such an old kernel? :-?

As mentioned above, I'd been neglecting to do a dist-upgrade, so some
old obsolete packages were preventing the install of a new kernel,
only allowing it if 440 packages could be removed. After doing a
`dist-upgrade` i was able to install 3.2.0-2-686-pae with no fuss,
and things are working fine now.

Regards,

John

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John Magolske
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On Mon, 14 May 2012 23:36:29 -0700, John Magolske wrote:

> My problem was resolved with an `aptitude dist-upgrade` which removed
> some obsolete packages and allowed new things to get upgraded, including
> a new kernel. I was being cautious with `aptitude upgrade` and `aptitude
> safe-upgrade`, but now I see the value of dist-upgrade.

When running a rolling flavour (eg., wheezy or sid) you have to do "dist-
upgrade", this way you ensure to keep your system in a similar state to
what developers expect. A dist-upgrade will automatically do its best for
updating packages, removing unused ones and keep your system as "fresh"
and "reliable" as possible.

But don't blindy let the updater to do such changes and carefully read
what it proposes before hitting the "y" key :-)

> * Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> [120512 22:23]:
>> On Thu, 10 May 2012 19:02:30 -0700, John Magolske wrote:
>>
>> > I'm running Sid on my ThinkPad X200s, and after an `aptitude upgrade`
>> > the WiFi is experiencing intermittent problems. Pretty sure it's not
>> > the hardware, as I've never experienced these issues before and this
>> > started happening exactly after the upgrade.
>> > [...]
>>
>> lsmod | grep iwlagn
>>
>> Wifi driver modules usually depend on others and you have to remove all
>> of them to satisfy their dependencies and they can be unloaded
>> successfully (as root, "modinfo iwlagn | grep depends" will tell you
>> more about this).
>
> Thanks for the tip. Not sure what this would've looked like before the
> dist-upgrade state...but now it's like so:

Most probably the outpute would have been the same.

> % lsmod | grep iwlagn
> % modinfo iwlagn | grep depends
> depends: mac80211,cfg80211

Okay, so in order to unload the driver you have first to remove these two.

> % modinfo iwlagn | grep -A 1 filename
> filename: /lib/modules/3.2.0-2-686-pae/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi.ko
> alias: iwlagn
>
> ... looks like iwlagn is now an alias to the iwlwifi module, which has
> replaced iwlagn as of Linux 3.2. In any case, WiFi is working fine now.

Yes, the driver was replaced since kernel 3.2, I think.

>> > % uname -a
>> > Linux ... 2.6.38-grml #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue May 24 15:10:58 UTC 2011
>> > i686 GNU/Linux
>>
>> (...)
>>
>> Mmm, why is that you are using such an old kernel? :-?
>
> As mentioned above, I'd been neglecting to do a dist-upgrade, so some
> old obsolete packages were preventing the install of a new kernel, only
> allowing it if 440 packages could be removed. After doing a
> `dist-upgrade` i was able to install 3.2.0-2-686-pae with no fuss, and
> things are working fine now.

Ah, good to know :-)

Well, if you are using Sid (or testing) to keep the system's integrity you
should have all the packages up-to-date.

Greetings,

--
Camaleón


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