Wireless Problem
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I'm mostly asking this because I can't for the life of me figure out why my wireless connection keeps dropping while using Trisquel.
As I've mentioned in a few threads, I'm using a MacBook Pro 2.1 with Libreboot and Trisquel installed. For some reason, my wireless network connectivity will suddenly drop off causing me to disable/re-enable networking to get back online. Sometimes it will work flawlessly for an hour, other times it will drop every 2-3 minutes. Using an external TP dongle doesn't seem to help either.
To troubleshoot the problem, I tried updating my kernel which did not work. Then I tried using different FSF endorsed distributions (and also Debian 8) which also had the same problem. Then out of pure curiosity, I tried using Linux Mint (which as you know is not a completely libre distribution) and the problem seems to be fixed. I've been connected for almost 4 hours now with absolutely no problems..
Do any of you experience similar problems to me? I have a feeling the libre driver for my wireless card may be the problem, which is terrible for me because I do not feel right using a non-free distribution of GNU/Linux but I also have to have a reliable wireless connection.
Any ideas?
could the wifi card just be failing?
also if the wifi card works at all i think its not a libre driver problem.
This was my initial thought, but seeing as the card worked perfectly when using Mint it makes me think there isn't anything wrong with the card.
>also if the wifi card works at all i think its not a libre driver problem.
I'm afraid this is not true since there could be a libre driver that kinda sorta works.
What does lspci say on the onboard wifi? How about lsusb on the dongle?
According to lspci this is the internal wireless card: Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR5418 Wireless Network Adapter [AR5008E 802.11(a)bgn] (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
Any Wi-fi card laying around unused that can be tried?
Or something like https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-mini-pcie might help. (Or are the components in the Mac un-replaceable?)
And have you tried Jxself's kernel?
Have you updated to the 4.1.1 kernel? Does it work in other linux properly? Is there updated firmware for it? Are you on gnome, maybe try another DE. I assume default is for no powersavings for the network card, if not install powertop and turn it off. Maybe someone knows of an alternative to network manager? Or maybe don't even use network manager at all, although a real pain for wireless. An arch guy with similar problem, said he wrote a little shell script that pings a high uptime server every 10 minutes or so. Or might just have to replace it with something more compatible.
Its crazy with these wirless cards, its the most common question in the linux help rooms, even people going to windows 10 now have all sorts of driver problems with them.
Maybe this well help you to try without network manager. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=571188
I've also tried using my ThinkPenguin dongle, and I get the same result. That is a surprise to me however, because I use the same dongle on my ThinkPad X201 running Trisquel and I do not have any connectivity problems. And yes, I've tried several kernels with the same results.
I'm starting to wonder if somehow Libreboot BIOS is the culprit?
One possible thought of what it could be: the BIOS sometimes loads a proprietary firmware blob into some of your hardware. It could be that such a blob is being loaded this way into hardware that is not supported by libre software, and it's just a crappy old version of the blob with an updaded version in mainline Linux available. Just speculation, of course; please don't take it to heart.
I don't believe this would be happening since I have flashed a free BIOS and replaced Apple's proprietary BIOS that is shipped with the MacBook.
according to this thread one known but could be dnsmasq in network manager config. https://askubuntu.com/questions/312588/internet-connection-drops-out
I still say try without network manager altogether, because it is the problem in alot of cases like yours.
I concur. I have always had a terrible experience using the GNOME network
manager, with all sorts of different cards. Thankfully, my current wifi card is
well-supported with free firmware, and so I do use the network manager. In the
past, I simply connected with wpa_supplicant before I started X, and never
touched the network manager. Worked like a charm.
Try just using wpa_supplicant.
That seems to be doing the trick! I don't know if it's actually placebo or not but I browsed all over the net last night for about 3 hours with no connection issues.
You're welcome.
You should probably put your network connection routine (ifconfig
up, wpa_supplicant -d -c -i -B, dhclient
) into a shell script and then drop it in /usr/bin. Makes life just
that little bit easier.
Btw, do you have a graphical login manager? Or do you startx?
/usr/local/bin is intended to contain such local scripts.
Is it? I've been living a lie!
I always put my own scripts and things in /usr/bin with everything else.
Is there some practical reason behind this? Or just Unix tradition?
Well, it is "cleaner" to have your homemade programs (for all users of the system) in a separate directory. Nothing prevents your program in /usr/bin from being overwritten if you install a package that happen to have picked the same name as yours for one of its binaries.
See what http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#USRLOCALLOCALHIERARCHY (the "Filesystem Hierarchy Standard") specifies:
The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system administrator when installing software locally. It needs to be safe from being overwritten when the system software is updated. It may be used for programs and data that are shareable amongst a group of hosts, but not found in /usr.
Locally installed software must be placed within /usr/local rather than /usr unless it is being installed to replace or upgrade software in /usr.
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#FTN.AEN1450 (a note) additionally says:
Software placed in / or /usr may be overwritten by system upgrades (though we recommend that distributions do not overwrite data in /etc under these circumstances). For this reason, local software must not be placed outside of /usr/local without good reason.
Shouldn't such scripts be placed in /home//bin/? I thought /usr/local/bin/ is reserved for applications you compile and install manually as in not from the repositories. For example I am running emacs 24.5 as only 24.3 (and not even that) is available in the repositories and it was installed to /usr/local/bin/. I guess if it needs to be available to all users of a system then it should go in /usr/local/bin.
That's the point. From a system administration standpoint, there is no real
difference between an executable someone compiled themselves and put
in /usr/local/bin and a shell script someone chmodded themselves. They are both
local user-created executables outside of the package management system, and as
such belong in /usr/local/bin.
* Proceeds to move all scripts to /usr/local/bin *
To ansser the original question re: tradition vs functional requirement, it's a convention that helps to maintain order by keeping binaries, taken from repository packages, from binaries resulting from compilation of sources not in the repos, and from scripts for use only by one user. For instance, if I build something for testing in a 'sandbox', I do the build such that the program has ~/builds/ as its base directory. This way, I cannot accidentally clobber something needed for the production system.
This might not be related but I was having problems with devices being booted off the WiFi network at home. Since my main computer is hooked to the router via cable I was not affected but my son's Windows machine and his Android device were loosing their ip lease for some reason. Over Christmas other family had brought their Apple products and were having that issue as well. I did not have SSID broadcast enabled and decided to shut down DCHP also. We manually configured every device with its own network IP. Since we did that, we are not having that problem. I think for a small home network, it makes sense to go with static IPs. That much less overhead for the router, the devices and the network.
My Thinkpad T420 with a Thinkpenguin wifi usb dongle was experiencing the same flakiness as tdlnx a couple of months ago, but I did two things that appear to have cured the problem: (1) Unplug the dongle from the USB port and plug it in again a few times to clean off the contacts; and (2) Re-orient the antenna on the router. My connection went from 6kb/s to around 60kb/s, which isn't lightning fast but is acceptable for web browsing and for keeping my Trisquel 7 installation up to date. It doesn't lose connectivity any more, either.
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