Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 202137
WLan works with kernel 2.6.15 but not with 2.6.17
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:11:40 EST
Description of problem: I cannot connect properly to a wireless LAN with the 2.6.17 kernel. It works with the 2.6.15 without any problems, though. Properly means, that most times the connections fails, I do not get an IP with dhcp. Very seldom, the connection with 2.6.17 kernels works, but only for some seconds - after that I cannot ping the router any more although in these cases I do not get any error message. System information: The WLan card is a ipw2200 pro. The firmware is installed with the packages from livna. It also does not work when I get the firmware from the ipw2200 homepage. I tried this with several different WLan access points, at least one of them WEP encrypted, the others not encrypted at all. The user space program I use is the NetworkManager, but I also tried by hand with iwconfig. This failed also. I tested other WLan cards which showed the same problem with kernel 2.6.17. But these two cards were both driven by ndiswrapper, and I never tested them with kernel 2.6.15. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.17.2174 does not work at all, kernel-2.6.15-1.2054 works. The ip2200 package has the number ipw2200-firmware-3.0-1. How reproducible: Take a WLan enabled computer and try to connect to a WLan. Additional info: I attach two text files with /var/log/messages outputs: The first, wlan-working is the output of a session with the 2.6.15 kernel. The second is an output of a 2.6.17 kernel: it worked in the first moment for some seconds. After it died away (without any disconnection message!) I reconnected (in the log mentioned as user switch), but this time it was not even able to get an IP.
Created attachment 133997 [details] An example of a working WLan session with kernel 2.6.15
Created attachment 134000 [details] An example of a non-working WLan session with kernel 2.6.17: first time it dies away, second time it does not connect at all
Please attach the output from running dmesg soon after trying to use the ipw2200 driver on 2.6.17...thanks!
Created attachment 134160 [details] demsg output As I said, this time it was a WAP secured network where I did not had a valid key.
A new kernel update has been released (Version: 2.6.18-1.2200.fc5) based upon a new upstream kernel release. Please retest against this new kernel, as a large number of patches go into each upstream release, possibly including changes that may address this problem. This bug has been placed in NEEDINFO state. Due to the large volume of inactive bugs in bugzilla, if this bug is still in this state in two weeks time, it will be closed. Should this bug still be relevant after this period, the reporter can reopen the bug at any time. Any other users on the Cc: list of this bug can request that the bug be reopened by adding a comment to the bug. In the last few updates, some users upgrading from FC4->FC5 have reported that installing a kernel update has left their systems unbootable. If you have been affected by this problem please check you only have one version of device-mapper & lvm2 installed. See bug 207474 for further details. If this bug is a problem preventing you from installing the release this version is filed against, please see bug 169613. If this bug has been fixed, but you are now experiencing a different problem, please file a separate bug for the new problem. Thank you.
Created attachment 140314 [details] the dmesg output, produced short after trying to access the WLan
Created attachment 140315 [details] messages output of a failed wlan access attempt
Do you have the version 3.0 ipw2200 firmware available in /lib/firmware? If not, please install there it after obtaining it from here: http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php Does the latest firmware help?
Thanks for the quick answer - unfortunatelly it didn't work. I tested with the freshrpms package, but also with the original firmware.
Your wireless network doesn't look too complicated (judging from the NetworkManager messages in the dmesg). Have you tried without using NetworkManager? # service NetworkManager stop # ifconfig eth1 up # iwconfig eth1 essid ConnectionPoint # dhclient eth1 Does that bring-up the device and get an IP address?
Created attachment 144219 [details] relevant /var/log/messages part
Created attachment 144222 [details] dmesg output Manual configuring the device does not work, see the dmesg and the messages output. :/
I used the grml live CDs to check if I can still access the WLan with a kernel 2.6.15 - and I was able to verify it: There were no problems at all with grml 0.6 (kernel 2.6.15) but I was not able to access the WLan with grml 0.9 (kernel 2.6.18). I can post the dmesg and messages outputs or test against other grml versions. That was with manual configuration, grml does not come with NetworkManager. I would install the kernel 2.6.15 from fc5 but it does not work because of a hal dependency :/
If I can provide any debug information just post me how to do that, I would love to provide more information.
Fyi: the problem is still valid in Kernel 2.6.19-1.2895.fc6 Also, I now bought a D-Link WLan router so I can set up any test environment at any time. Just say what information I should provide, and I will do (if anything comes to your mind, looks like I'm the only one with that problem).
Today I tried to reproduce the problem with the OpenSuse 10.2 Live DVD - and there the WLan worked. The Opensuse Live DVD uses a kernel of the 2.6.18 line.
It magically started working - magically, because I have no idea why it suddenly does so. However, just in case anyone else ever comes into the same situation, here is what I did: I tried to set up the wireless connection with wifi-radar. I expected it to fail (since I've also tried other programs, tools and the command line) and so did it. The dhcp client was unable to receive a response. However, in wifi-radar you can also, if you want to, set some values for the connection, and so I set the right channel (6) - and it worked. It connected and everything. After that I also set the channel in system-config-network to 6 - and suddenly NetworkManager was able to connect. But afterwards I also set the channel in system-config-network to other values, or the mode to managed (where you cannot set any channel at all), and every configuration I tried worked this time. So, after all, I have no idea why it suddenly works. And I have no idea why for example grml struggled to connect to the WLan with the newer kernel. But I would like to thank everyone who has looked into this and spent time thinking about it. I myself spent much to many hours on this problem, what a waste :/