WIFI works fine, but disappears from time to time

[BlueVette]

Greetings,
  I have a Dell Inspiron laptop and PCLinuxOS 2010.7 installed on it.  The WIFI card/access works fine most of the time.  However, from time to time (and I have yet to find a pattern to it) the WIFI card appears to disappear.  I'll open the network manager and try to rescan the network and nothing is present.  I'll go to the pclos control center and attempt to remove/add the wifi card again, but it tells me the hardware isn't present.  However, if I reboot the system, it is immediately back.   A reboot fixes it every time.  Any ideas?  Is there something I can try to 'reactivate' the wifi interface without rebooting (atleast in an attempt to trouble shoot).
Oh, and also, when I do an ifconfig while the WIFI interface is 'gone', wlan0 does not show up in the listings.

Thanks,
Drew

[Talisman]

What wireless adapter do you have?  Are you using a Windows driver (ndiswrapper)?

[BlueVette]

It is an Intel Corporation Pro/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] card/chipset on the laptop mobo. It is not using ndiswrapper, but rather, the drivers as were autoconfigured at the time of pclos installation.

[pelone]

It may not be software related? When I had my Asus netbook, it only connected using G, and it would disconnect after a few minutes of little or no activity. I would have to reboot to start it up again. I could see the wife card, but it would not connect.

When I would use another computer with B it would not disconnect.

[Joble]

Is there something I can try to 'reactivate' the wifi interface without rebooting (atleast in an attempt to trouble shoot).

In a terminal as root you can do:
service network restart

That should bring your interface back up without a reboot.

[muungwana]

can you open the terminal next time the problem occur and then type "su" and enter root's password and then this command and post its contents here? The below command will print out last 100 lines of the log file. Go to  pcc(pclinuxos control center) services section and make sure the system logging service is running.

cat /var/log/syslog | tail -n 100

[AndrzejL]

I have the same problem with USB rt2500 card. Unplugging and plugging back in fixes the issues...

My best advice? Change card to atheros based one. Have 2 of them. Best cards ever.

Andy

[gdesilva]

I have the same Intel PRO Wiireless 3945ABG card running in a Dell Inspiron 9400 and have the exact same problem. No problem restarting using the Wireless Connection Manager though.

If some one found a solution to this it would be greatly appreciated if the solution or the workaround is posted here.

Thanks

[gdesilva]

Just came across about a work around published by Intel

http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/cs-006205.htm#i

which says that by turning off power save polling on the card this may be fixed.

Any idea how this can be done in PClos?

[menotu]

Just came across about a work around published by Intel

http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/cs-006205.htm#i

which says that by turning off power save polling on the card this may be fixed.

Any idea how this can be done in PClos?

Does this offer any help?

http://www.lesswatts.org/tips/wireless.php

[AS]

I have the same Intel PRO Wiireless 3945ABG card running in a Dell Inspiron 9400 and have the exact same problem. No problem restarting using the Wireless Connection Manager though.

If some one found a solution to this it would be greatly appreciated if the solution or the workaround is posted here.

Thanks

Hi gdesliva,

I have the same card 3945ABG on a different Dell Vostro 1710, mine is working  day and night without any problem, using module iwl3945,
actually using kernel 2.6.37.4-pclos1.pae, but it worked with previous kernels too. Do not remember to have applied any tweak.
Note: I'm still using 11g only access-point, may be the 11n is where problems arise.

AS

[gdesilva]

Many thanks to 'as' and 'menotu' for the most useful suggestions.

@as, I have the iwl3945 loaded as well but my wifi card appears to be behaving somewhat differently.

After going through the link provided by menotu I thought of tweaking the beacon interval on the wireless router. I dropped it down to 50msec and guess what the link has stayed up for more than 30 minutes now - earlier it used to drop the link after about 5 minutes idle time. It appears that dropping the beacon interval makes it harder for the wifi card to go in to the power save mode. I am not sure what other implications are so if you think this is a no-no please let me know.

Thanks again for your help.