[GRLUG] Wireless problem

[Michael Mol]

On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Eric Beversluis
<ebever at researchintegration.org> wrote:
> The last few days I've been unable to get wireless going in the morning
> without rebooting my computer.
>
> Using Fedora 15 on Lenovo x120e.
>
> Wireless seems to work fine during the day when computer comes out of
> sleep mode. But in the morning it won't connect when coming out of sleep
> mode.

> It keeps prompting me to enter my password, but that doesn't help.

It asks you for your wireless password when it isn't certain it has
the right one. Typically, that means it didn't get very far in
associating with the AP. I take it you're running a WPA or WPA2
network, not a WEP network.

> I've tried turning wireless off an on and that doesn't help.

AFAIK, turning wireless off and on doesn't do much apart from turning
the radio off or on. It's not like a full power cycle of an external
device.

> The only thing that seems to work is rebooting the box.

Ctrl-Alt-Delete reboot, or poweroff/poweron reboot?

The wireless hardware (or its drivers) might be doing some kind of
drift compensation for environmental effects, and a reboot might be
what's allowing the firmware to reset some counters.

> (One of the things that
> sold me on Linux was that problems with a particular app weren't
> supposed to require rebooting the entire system.)

For userland stuff (and especially things that aren't, e.g. the D-Bus
daemon), that's true. For kernel stuff like hardware drivers, not so
much.

>
> Any ideas as to what is happening or what I should do?

Did anything change between when you first noticed this symptom and
the few days prior? Any software or hardware changes?

If not, my first guess is going to be something environmental. Perhaps
a neighbor picked up a leaky microwave, or some high-EMF fan or other
often-on equipment. Or they're running a PC with the case off, and not
using BIOS features like 'spread spectrum'.

-- 
:wq