Intrepid Ibex

For what it's worth, the very latest Intrepid upgrade, to 2.6.27-3 seems to have broken wireless on my other Acer laptop, which uses the same card. Sigh.

It doesn't seem to see the card at all, either under ath0 or wlan0.

I haven't even investigated as I'm not a big Ubuntu user.
So, it's possible if you're running it on the Aspire One that the same thing has happened.

Seems they got it right in 2.6.27.2--I'm not sure if this is an Ubuntu issue or kernel issue.

 

Captive, did you try the update/upgrade before or after my post?
I guess what you can do is try again every day, hoping that they fixed it, then don't update until the release

 

I did the upgrade after first reboot, with cable connected, so I didn't test the wifi with -2 kernel.. Shame on me!
2.6.27-2 kernel is not available, even browsing packages repositories, so I'll have to wait..
Anyway I'll keep dist-upgrading until it get fixed, I'm quite used to ubuntu alphas (I'm on ubuntu since Warty, late 2004), and I know it's usual to have some modules breaks in last weeks before release..

Edit:
I posted on launchpad about this regression, here

 

I can confirm this is also the case on Acer Aspire 4720z. (I don't have an Ubuntu bugzilla account as I don't use it that much.)

 

After playing more with my WiFi connection, I think the drivers are buggy or something, because under Linpus I could go in almost any sport of my yard and have a decent connection, but with Intrepid I can't even talk (properly) on skype from my livingroom, which is maybe 10 meters away.
With Linpus I had 90%+ signal in the livingroom, now I have 31%. And it is not the router, because I checked with another laptop that works fine...

Is there any way to tweak the wifi power settings?

 

I've managed to get the card reader to support Sony MS. I had to enable the experimental MS support in the kernel and the jmicron drivers, and add a "modprobe jmb38x_ms" to /etc/rc.local. Still needs a card inserted at boot, but I can now read MS, even though it is in 4 bit mode:

Code:

Sep 14 23:25:08 jbs-one kernel: memstick0: switching to 4-bit parallel mode
Sep 14 23:25:08 jbs-one kernel: memstick0: could not switch to 8-bit mode, error -62

 

@jbernardo
I have heard this module has a bug and is a resource hog. Have you noticed a heavy load on the processor?

 

Ok, there is something strange going on.
The network manager applet shows a very weak signal, but the network monitor applet shows a much higher (hopefully real) signal.

 

Not yet, but I haven't tested it extensively. Now that I found out I can get MS to work, I am even more interested in finding out why it and SD won't work unless you have a card inserted at boot.

 

On Launchpad I was told to blacklist ath_pci to make wifi card work.
I don't have my AAO with me, so I can try it, maybe you want to.. Anyway I think I tried quite the same thing by rmmodding and modprobing, with no luck!

And..

Does your AAO hibernate on lid close? My just shuts off the screen, nothing else... :?:

 

I think that turning off the screen is far more useful than hibernating, because you can use it for stuff such as listening to net radio, music, compiling things, downloading big files, etc. You have the menu buttons for hibernation (which didn't work well for me anyway).

 

With kde 4.1, mine either only shuts of the screen or hangs. To suspend I have to do it from the command line.

 

Well this all looks pretty promising then. The 8.10 beta is due to be released at the start of October so I think I'll try an upgrade then. Thanks to all the alpha testers for putting your time and data on the line for the rest of us

 

I tested this. Put a line in /etc/modprope.d/blacklist with this:

Code:

blacklist ath_pci

and your wireless will be up and running on next reboot. For good. Maybe.
Side effect is you will loose your wifi led, I'll look for a solution..

 

Yuppers, I can verify this in Intrepid on my 4720z (also an Acer Aspire).
Thank you for posting on launchpad and following it up.

I have a moderately well-known page about the card, I'll have to add this info, so you've probably wound up helping many more people.

 

Does anyone know what netbook / A1 related fixes are to be expected in the Alpha 6 release? .. in any :|
I messed up my linpus install (again) yesterday so this seems like a good time to switch to a 'real' distro.

 

Are you experiencing connection slowdowns?
Bandwith seems to be narrowed to 20KBytes/s!
I can download at 1MByte/s using ethernet, and almost at the same speed using petaramesh kernel with madwifi ath_pci compiled on it. If I use 2.6.27-3 with ath5k I start with 150-200 KB/s but in a few seconds it slows down to 20-25KB/s.
This was tested downloading from different sources, upgrading system, etc..
It doesn't look like there is packet loss.

 

i got some problems tryin to use the knetworkmanager with wlan

at least just one problem, it doesn't connect, its a 802.11 and i'm using wpa2 personal
where is the problem? any ideas?

 

The knetworkmanager is a known bug. Until it works you need to install network-manager-gnome, and run nm-applet after closing knetworkmanager.

 

I've just installed Alpha 6. Firstly wifi and audio doesn't work out of the box. After installing another kernel (petaramesh') Wifi started working, but audio still doesn't work. I must say I like it so far, runs quite smoothly and I like the new human theme. Downside; terrible battery life; ~90 minutes.. Haven't tried suspend or hibernation yet.