Ubuntu
network-manager package

Network manager sometimes gets the device type wrong

Bug #60162 reported by Mary Gardiner on 2006-09-13

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #59981: suspend makes network-manager say eth1 is a wired device. Edit Remove

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	network-manager (Ubuntu)	Confirmed	Undecided	Unassigned

Bug Description

Network Manager is sometimes mistaking my Intel ipw2200 wireless card for a wired card, so that when I click on the applet two wired cards show up.

This causes the following problems:
1. if my wireless card has managed to associate with an open access point, Network Manager immediately tries to bring the network interface up via dhcp, because it assumes that all wired networks are trusted. I don't like it joining wireless networks without specific instructions to do so.
2. since Network Manager doesn't think the card is wireless, it is unable to let me connect to networks requiring a WEP or WPA key.

This bug usually, although not always, shows up after resume from suspend. Restarting Network Manager causes it to correctly identify the card again.

I have only observed this bug in Edgy, never in the Dapper version of network manager.

Revision history for this message

Mary Gardiner (puzzlement) wrote on 2006-09-13:

Screenshot illustrating Network Manager thinking my IPW2200 card is wired Edit (13.4 KiB, image/png)

Revision history for this message

Derek Monner (dmonner) wrote on 2006-09-27:

I am having the same problem with my Edgy Knot 3 installation, and it never occurred in Dapper.

When you resume from suspend and NetworkManager says your wireless card is a wired card, open up a terminal and do "iwconfig". See if your wireless interface is listed as having any wireless extensions. For me, it showed no wireless extensions. After unloading and reloading the ipw2200 module, "iwconfig" was back to correctly reporting wireless extensions. However, at this point NetworkManager failed to re-classify my card as a wireless card.

What commands did you use to restart NetworkManager in order to get it to correctly identify the card again? I tried killing the processes and re-starting them (NetworkManager, NetworkManagerDispatcher, and even nm-applet) but my card was still miss-classified.

Revision history for this message

Mary Gardiner (puzzlement) wrote on 2006-09-28: Re: [Bug 60162] Re: Network manager sometimes gets the device type wrong

For me, it is still listed as having a wireless extension even though NM
lists two wired cards (this is why it can sometimes actually bring the
so-called "wired" interface up -- the card associates even though NM
doesn't even know it is wireless):

eth1 unassociated ESSID:off/any

I am not sure now if I was corrent in saying that restarting NM
sometimes works. I usually unload and load my driver: "rmmod ipw2200;
modprobe ipw2200"

Revision history for this message

Derek Monner (dmonner) wrote on 2006-09-28:

Thanks for the reply. It seems after the latest round of updates my
problem matches yours: wireless extensions are still there after
resume, and unloading and reloading the driver generally fixes things
and allows NM to recognize the wireless card again.

On 9/28/06, Mary Gardiner <email address hidden> wrote:
> For me, it is still listed as having a wireless extension even though NM
> lists two wired cards (this is why it can sometimes actually bring the
> so-called "wired" interface up -- the card associates even though NM
> doesn't even know it is wireless):
>
> eth1 unassociated ESSID:off/any
>
> I am not sure now if I was corrent in saying that restarting NM
> sometimes works. I usually unload and load my driver: "rmmod ipw2200;
> modprobe ipw2200"
>
> --
> Network manager sometimes gets the device type wrong
> https://launchpad.net/bugs/60162
>