Ubuntu
pcmciautils package

Wifi card stops working with Dapper Drake, Flight 5

Bug #37260 reported by rapha
12
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
pcmciautils (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

The T-Sinus 130card, which worked perfectly in
Hoary Hedgehog and had difficulties maintaining a stable connection in Breezy Badger, stops working entirely in Dapper Drake.

Most interesting, however, is that it works perfectly during the installation process. When you insert it into the PCMCIA slot you have to /etc/init.d/pcmciautils restart and /etc/init.d/networking restart and then remove and insert it again before you get, through dmesg, the following:

[4295798.502000] pccard: PCMCIA card inserted into slot 0
[4295798.502000] cs: memory probe 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff: clean.
[4295798.535000] pcmcia: registering new device pcmcia0.0
[4295798.763000] ieee80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
[4295798.813000] hostap_cs: 0.4.4-kernel (Jouni Malinen <email address hidden>)
[4295798.814000] hostap_cs: setting Vcc=33 (constant)
[4295798.814000] hostap_cs: CS_EVENT_CARD_INSERTION
[4295798.814000] hostap_cs: setting Vcc=50 (from config)
[4295798.815000] Checking CFTABLE_ENTRY 0x01 (default 0x01)
[4295798.815000] IO window settings: cfg->io.nwin=1 dflt.io.nwin=1
[4295798.815000] io->flags = 0x0046, io.base=0x0000, len=64
[4295798.815000] hostap_cs: Registered netdevice wifi0
[4295798.856000] hostap_cs: index 0x01: Vcc 5.0, irq 5, io 0x0100-0x013f
[4295799.053000] prism2_hw_init: initialized in 197 ms
[4295799.054000] wifi0: NIC: id=0x800c v1.0.0
[4295799.055000] wifi0: PRI: id=0x15 v1.0.4
[4295799.055000] wifi0: STA: id=0x1f v1.2.0
[4295799.057000] wifi0: defaulting to host-based encryption as a workaround for firmware bug in Host AP mode WEP
[4295799.057000] wifi0: defaulting to bogus WDS frame as a workaround for firmware bug in Host AP mode WDS
[4295799.061000] wifi0: registered netdevice wlan0
[4295799.110000] orinoco 0.15rc3 (David Gibson <email address hidden>, Pavel Roskin <email address hidden>, et al)
[4295799.116000] orinoco_cs 0.15rc3 (David Gibson <email address hidden>, Pavel Roskin <email address hidden>, et al)

iwconfig says:

eth0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"test"
          Mode:Master Access Point: Not-Associated Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
          Sensitivity=1/3
          Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off

After configuring the card through System > System Administration > Network it appears to be working (the light isn't blinking anymore), ifconfig, iwconfig and route look good. To no avail though.

A reboot brought things back to what I described above. Even worse though, when the card is enabled in the network configuration and plugged in at boot-time, it will hang the boot indefinitely (?) until unplugged.

I'd consider this a critical bug, since it makes the computer entirely unusable to the owner. If she was on her own she'd stand no chance in hell of ever getting this to work. This is even more frustrating since it used to work perfectly in Hoary (I had downgraded the computer when it became apparent that the network connection wouldn't work reliably in Breezy).

Please note again that it worked perfectly fine during the installation.

Revision history for this message
rapha (raphael-codeschmi) wrote :

Trying with the old /etc/network/interfaces from Hoary, which looks as following, also fails:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

mapping hotplug
        script grep
        map eth1

iface eth0 inet static
        wireless-mode managed
        wireless-essid XXX
        wireless-key XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
        address 10.0.0.XXX
        netmask 255.0.0.0
        gateway 10.0.0.XXX

auto eth0

iface eth1 inet dhcp

Revision history for this message
Tormod Volden (tormodvolden) wrote :

In understand this is a prism2 based card, for which the prism2, hostap and orinoco drivers can be used (with variable success). Was the same driver active in Hoary? See also bug #31075.

Revision history for this message
Alexander Berger (alex-berger) wrote :

I had the same Problem with my Dell TrueMobile PCMCIA Card, which
uses the orinoco_cs module. I solved the Problem by blacklisting
the hostap driver (modules hostap and hostap_cs).

To blacklist the hostap driver for cards using the orinoco driver you
can do as described below:

echo "blacklist hostap" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-orinoco
echo "blacklist hostap_cs" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-orinoco

If you want your changes to work you have to eject the card and unload the hostap modules manually or reboot your machine.

Revision history for this message
Basilio Kublik (sourcercito) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Thanks in advance.

Changed in pcmciautils:
assignee: nobody → sourcercito
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Basilio Kublik (sourcercito) wrote :

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

Changed in pcmciautils:
assignee: sourcercito → nobody
status: Incomplete → Invalid
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