wireless stopped connecting from pclinux; other linux/xp working (Resolved)

[The_Dadu]

After doing a synaptic upgrade all this morning, my Asus 1000HD stopped connecting to the wireless router. All other devices on the network are working and connected. XP, Joli 1.2, and SplashtopOS on the 1000HD all start and connect normally, so this appears to be PCLINUXOS-problem only. One other symptom, the GRUB boot menu startup app has changed to reporting as PCLINUX-Gnome. While I previously had gnome installed in addition to LXDE (my main on this box) and KDE, I had what I thought to be the KDE startup GRUB app.
I will need to use this computer on the road starting again in January, so I'd like to get PCLOS connecting again.
I'd appreciate any suggestions for repair or problem research. I'm posting this from XP (groan)).  

[agmg]

Have you tried deleting your connection and configuring it again?

[DeBaas]

There is a WiFi update in the repo, followed on complaints about disappearing WiFi
Tested on different machines. Don't know if its already mirrored.
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,111001.msg949029.html#msg949029
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,111001.msg949106.html#msg949106
Other crossreference search for rfkill and rfkill-qt-gui

[Ramchu]

Yes it is in the Repo's - Look for wpa_supplicant

[The_Dadu]

Thanks for the quick replies. I've tried the delete/readd the wireless connection with no change in the situation. When I read the other comments in the thread linked by DeBaas, I noticed many made reference to the router not appearing. That isn't my problem; I see my router and the usual other routers in the neighborhood in the choices. The specific problem is when I attempt to connect, the connection reports as failed. Since I do not have a wired connection available at this time, I will have to wait for this evening to get to a wired connection and look for the specific packages you have recommended I check.

[The_Dadu]

I tried reloading wpa_supplicant once I had a wired connection. Rebooted and tried the wireless. Still not connecting.

[gilado]

Had a similar problem, except I did not even upgrade. Repeated reboots did not help either.

Rebooted into Win7 and wireless was working.

Rebooted back into pclos and now wireless works.

[OldProfessorBear]

 ???Don't know if I had the same problem as everybody else, but I just spent two days (or was it 3?) trying to get PCLOS talking to my network again ... I'm not sure what killed it, but I was in fact trying to run an update when everything went wrong (and the system froze up).

Anyway, I was running off of a bootable thumb drive, fairly recent vintage, so was at least able with some finagling to get Firefox working with my proper profile. And searched for a solution till my eyes bled (figuratively!). Spent a lot of time banging around with Krusader, to little avail. I looked at logs until bleary as well, which somehow triggered my next action -

I decided to UNINSTALL networkmanager, and lo and behold, was able to get going again!

It seemed a good thing to install when I did it, but I think it's poison in some circumstances. I think it makes changes in your network configuration without your knowledge, and thus screws things up. Dunno, but that's what my famous intuition tells me.

[Howard]

This sounds like the problem I had. See:

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,111694.0.html

I solved it by installing the older version of the wpa suppliant.   If you are using a wpa password try this. 

But it seems that it might also be solved by upgrading to libdrakx-net-0.87-13 (now in the repos).  I didn't try that as I'm in if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it mode.

[Ramchu]

After reading this thread yesterday, I started messing around with my wireless connection
here in PCLinux KDE and lost the ability to connect.

After many attempts to reconnect and deleting my wireless connection and setting it up again
I finally got it to reconnect.

I finally removed the wireless connection - then rebooted
Went in to setup a new Wifi connection and at the point that discovered my wireless network
I selected to set it up manually - entered all of the information and selected Start the connection now.

It connected with full signal strength .

I then did as it recommended and restarted the Xserver by a log out - log in.

Don't know if this will help you but it worked for me.

[OldProfessorBear]

Ya, the symptoms I was having were really bizarre; the 'puter would sometimes see wireless networks, including mine, but was never able to connect. It generally took several rescans to make them appear, but as I said, it never connected.

I even ran a (possibly suspect) ethernet cable over to the router and tried to get in that way. No dice. I may still try this with a fresh cable to see if I can improve the effective bandwidth, but that's another project.

My laptop never lost wifi connectivity. And when I booted the desktop from the stick, it connected quickly and easily, so I knew it wasn't a hardware problem.

Now it's been up for hours and seems fine (fingers crossed), so it looks like deleting networkmanager worked for me. If it hadn't, my next step would have been to uninstall wpa-supplicant, which seemed to be doing possibly fishy things. But that seems OK now.

[The_Dadu]

I was unable to get the wireless working, but I was able to resolve the problem. I was able to boot using a live CD (which connected without problems to the wireless router). There was no data on this machine that wasn't backed up. So, I reinstalled PCLOS from the live CD, wiping the /home partition along with the rest of the disk allocated to PCLOS.  The rebuilt machine now connects without any issues.
As a side learning opportunity associated with this resolution, I was able to figure out how to add grub menu entries for the built-in SD slot and a usb key.

[Howard]

Now I'm back home I realise that there have been two different problems. 

When setting up my home connection I discovered that the networks were not listed, but I could connect manually, so I imagine it was a display problem rather than a detection problem.   This was fixed with an upgrade to drakx-net 0.87-13pclos2012.

The other problem I had with  my son's network was fixed by the wpa-suppliant upgrade.  (But available networks were displayed there so I'm still a bit puzzled!)

[dixonpete]

I decided to sit this one out till the dust settled

Yesterday I hard cabled up to my router and updated. Problem solved..