Intel wireless suddenly stopped working

[keith11]

Hi, I am facing a problem which has blocked me from finding solutions to other problems in Mandriva Powerpack 2007 which is runing on my Toshiba Satellite M35-S320 laptop. Until today the wireless internet was working fine and I had configured it by placing the ip2200 firmware in /lib/firmware and then going through the steps from hardware configuration window. Occasionally, the network would show connected but no pages would load, but then I used to disconnect and then reconnect from the wireless manager and after a few minutes(although it's a very long time) it used to get connected again. But today, when I tried connecting like that, it is just not getting connected. I wanted to check what was happening while the wireless was trying to be connected so I typed the command "modprobe eth2", eth2 being my wireless card. I did a mistake by typing that command as I realized later on that it was to add or remove modules from the kernel. Once I realized this, I again typed "modprobe eth2" assuming it might again put back the entry of eth2 in the kernel. I am not even an average level linux user so ended up doing such mistakes. Please note though that I was not being able to connect even before I type modprobe for the first time (only sometimes I also got an error about some zeroconf when it was trying to get the dhcp address). Internet connection in linux is very crucial for me at this stage as I was trying to solve other problems in linux directly from linux. Without the wireless connection I have to log into windows everytime I have to go online, even for posting this post. Please let me know what I did wrong and how I can fix it without re-installing the whole Mandriva (I would go to that length as wireless access is very important to me right now). Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

After posting the above I logged into linux and gathered some information which might help in figuring out the problem. I am posting the content of some files in /etc :

 

Content of wpa_supplicant.conf :

 

An error occurred while loading system:/media/hda10/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:

Could not read /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.

 

Content of resolv.conf :

 

nameserver "the server address" (I edited the exact address)

nameserver "the server address"

Content of modprobe.conf (there were other modules listed too but I pasting only the relevant ones):

 

alias eth1 eth1394

alias ieee1394-controller ohci1394

alias eth2 ipw2200

 

 

Output of "dmesg":

 

ipw2200: Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.1.2kmpr

ipw2200: Copyright© 2003-2006 Intel

 

Corporation

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0a.0[A] -> Link [LNKD] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11

ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection

ipw2200: Detected geography ZZM (11 802.11bg channels, 0 802.11a channels)

ieee80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'WEP'

ip_tables: © 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team

NET: Registered protocol family 10

lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions

ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready

IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver

Installing knfsd (copyright © 1996 okir@monad.swb.de).

NFSD: Using /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery as the NFSv4 state recovery directory

NFSD: starting 90-second grace period

Netfilter messages via NETLINK v0.30.

ip_conntrack version 2.4 (6139 buckets, 49112 max) - 224 bytes per conntrack

ClusterIP Version 0.8 loaded successfully

eth2: no IPv6 routers present

.

.

.(some content here)

.

.

eth2: no IPv6 routers present

eth2: no IPv6 routers present

Edited January 8, 2007 by keith11

[ianw1974]

First, I'd try doing:

 

modprobe ipw2200

 

instead of modprobe eth2. The alias of eth2 should do this for you, but it doesn't always work. Sometimes, I've even had to add the module to /etc/modprobe.preload to get wireless working. You can verify if the module is loaded using:

 

lsmod

 

or filter it with:

 

lsmod | grep ipw2200

 

Now, you're /etc directory is a little bit worrying, and I don't like that error. What's the contents of your /etc/fstab file?

 

Also, do:

 

ls -l /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

 

for me, so we can see if this file does exist, or for some reason is symlinked somewhere.

[keith11]

Following are the three outputs you wanted:

 

[root@localhost /]# ls -l /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

-rw------- 1 root daemon 29732 Jan 8 13:16 /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

 

 

[root@localhost /]# lsmod | grep ipw2200

 

ipw2200 99696 0

 

ieee80211 30408 1 ipw2200

 

 

 

Content of /etc/fstab:

 

 

/dev/hda10 / ext3 noatime 1 1

 

/dev/hda7 /boot ext3 noatime 1 2

 

/dev/hda9 /home ext3 noatime 1 2

 

/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0022,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0

 

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0022,nls=utf8,ro 0 0

 

/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d ntfs umask=0022,nls=utf8,ro 0 0

 

/dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e vfat umask=0022,nls=utf8,rw 0 0

 

none /proc proc defaults 0 0

 

/dev/hda8 swap swap defaults 0 0

 

 

Thanks.

[ianw1974]

Can you view what is in the wpa_supplicant file? You can try:

 

less /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

 

or:

 

cat /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

 

to just see it display on the screen without editing it too much. :q to get out of less.

[keith11]

[i viewed the wpa_supplicant.conf file. I saw the networks I have around my area and the keys for my wireless, etc. I am not sure what exactly you wanted me to see in that file. Also, if possible could you please explain what seems to be the problem? Thanks.

[keith11]

I know this will sound funny but I am in my office and I am able to connect to wireless here. How come I am not able to connect at my home? All the previous messages saying I was not able to connect to the wireless internet were related to my home wireless. I was able to connect properly at home too a few days ago and then I don't know why (if something happened because of modprobe as mentioned in my previous messages) it suddenly stopped connecting to any wireless connections at my home. I will go home and try connecting again and I hope I am able to connect. I am confused what the problem could be. Please stay with me on this. Thanks.

[keith11]

I don't know what is happening but I am able to connect from my home too. The only change I did was just click on the interactive firewall in the wireless menu. Thanks.