Ubuntu 10.04 LTS: The Lucid Lynx

in addition, im not sure whether this is a problem with ubuntu, but i have zero battery life. soon as i pull the power, it dies... i guess the battery is shot though, i just didnt think it would be. its not that old. excuse to get a 6 cell one now

 

On the wireless issue. success has been reported by installing these packages:

linux-backports-modules-wireless
linux-backports-modules-wireless-lucid-generic

HTH

 

Not a problem with Ubuntu--unless gnome-power-manager has some oddball settings.
Does it "die", suspend, hibernate, or shutdown?
If you plug it back in and turn it on, does it check disks (run fsck)?
If so, it's the battery.

 

Interesting bit of "info" I came across here: http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Laptops/Acer#Acer_Aspire_150L
(may well be outdated, it's OpenSUSE 11.1 with old madwifi drivers)
"The usage of the Madwifi drivers does not work in conjunction with the r8169 lan driver that comes with the kernel. Having loaded the r8169 module and the ath_pci in parallel will cause severe data corruption when transferring larger chunks of data via wlan."

It could be worth trying

Code:

sudo ifconfig eth0 down
sudo modprobe -r r8169

to see if wireless is better.
Be aware that this is removing ethernet support; use

Code:

sudo modprobe r8169
sudo ifconfig eth0 up

to restore ethernet.

(little note--disabling ethernet does get a few more minutes of battery life)

 

Hallo again guys. After sticking with ndiswrapper for a few days i got tired of the kernel crashes so i decided to ditch it. I made a fresh install and comiled and installed madwifi snapsot tecno suggested (after doing "sudo apt-get install build essential"). The problem is that when i enable the driver from system i don't have wired or wireless connections. The options in the taskbar are there but cannot choose it. What i'm doing wrong? Thanks

 

Hi, all.

This one seems to be working... Thanks!

In order to force the connection drops I do a port scan, say, "nmap scanme.nmap.org".
After a few seconds of this load, the connection always drops with the kernel ath5k.

My experiences with Ubuntu 10.04 and:
Kernel ath5k (2.6.32-22.33) --> connection drops under high load
Compat Wireless (2.6.34-rc4) --> same problem
Madwifi 0.9.4 (r4126-20100324) --> no wireless device created
Madwifi-hal snapshot 0.10.5.6 (r4126-20100324) --> mostly works, but sometimes doesn't associate w/ AP
Ndiswrapper 1.9 (1.54-2ubuntu1); XP Driver 7.6.0.224 --> mostly works, takes a bit to associate, sometimes doesn't at all
linux-backports-modules-wireless-lucid-generic (2.6.32-22.13) --> At least for now, no drops!

(other possible alternatives are madwifi-hal-testing, madwifi-trunk, and other compat-wireless version)

Thanks.

 

Spoke too soon... just had a connection drop again.
So far as I remember, this affected me for a long time in Debian Testing, then an update made the problem disappear. So there must be a patch out there somewhere that fixes it. I don't think it was a kernel/driver update, though.

 

With madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4119-20100201.tar.gz, I found that failure to associate with the AP seems to be associated with the switch-- it seems to occasionally think it's switched off, when I don't think I did it. Fortunately, the switch works both ways (on and off).
madwifi 0.9.4 never supported AR5007 chips, so it will not work; madwifi-hal is the first Madwifi branch to work, and most other branches are based on it.

 

Check /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf
Look at the output of

Code:

lsmod|grep ath
lsmod|grep ndis

to see whether ath_pci (madwifi), ath5k, or ndiswrapper is loaded.
You'll need to blacklist ndiswrapper and ath5k if they are present, and comment out any lines blacklisting ath_pci:

Code:

gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf

 

Ibidem thanks a lot. I did what you said. Now even thow the driver from the system says that is on and being used (madwifi) when i go to connection properties it says driver ath5k. The output of the command lsmod|grep ath
you gave me is
ath_pci 201436 0
wlan 220690 1 ath_pci
ath_hal 301194 1 ath_pci
ath5k 121976 0
mac80211 209734 1 ath5k
ath 8073 1 ath5k
cfg80211 130639 3 ath5k,mac80211,ath
led_class 2864 1 ath5k
How i am going to blacklist ath5k? Adding a line "blacklist ath5k" to the file blacklist-ath_pci.conf? or creating a new file with the name "blacklist-ath5k.conf? Please help me and i am very sorry i bother you. Thanks

 

You can add a line blacklisting ath5k, and also comment the line that blacklists ath_pci (with a hash sign):

Code:

#blacklist ath_pci
blacklist ath5k

The Hardware Drivers dialog in System>Administration should change that file automatically, though.

 

wcs thanks. I did what you said but nothing. When madwifi is enabled and ath5k blacklisted i don't have wireless. The output of the command lsmod grepath when madwifi is enabled is
ath_rate_sample 11668 1
ath_pci 201436 0
wlan 220690 4 wlan_scan_sta,ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
ath_hal 301194 3 ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
I don't know if that helps. Thanks guys.

 

For some reason, the 1st time I did it the same happened to me....

I don't know exactly what I did to fix it, but I think it was loading it like this once:

Code:

modprobe -r ath_pci
modprobe ath_pci rfkill=1

After this, I can always scan and connect (even though it is loaded with the rfkill parameter as 0). Strange...

 

wcs it worked . After executing the last two commands i have madwifi. Two things: firstly it seems to be slower, less responsive i would say. The wireless connection now is at 24mbps. Second: the wifi led doesn't work (minor thing). And lastly is it permanent? Thanks a lot really.

 

I had my first dropout with ath_pci. And is very slow when surfing. What i can say. Thanks guys.

 

I felt that the signal wasn't as strong with madwifi, but I haven't noticed it being slower.
And so far, I only had drops when the signal was very low, but not due to high load.
I guess it should always work after a reboot now, but you know, your mileage may vary.

For the led, see if you get it with these two commands:

Code:

sudo sysctl -w dev.wifi0.ledpin=3
sudo sysctl -w dev.wifi0.softled=1

I tried putting those values in /etc/sysctl.conf, but no luck... maybe if you put those two commands in /etc/rc.local it will always work (without sudo).

Finally, note that you won't have wireless after suspend.
Instead of unloading and reloading the module, I sorted this out by creating a text file inside /etc/pm/config.d/ that contains the following line:

Code:

SUSPEND_MODULES="ath_pci"

I think this is all. So far, this is the one I prefer, because the drops with ath5k made voip and video calls impossible.
But, of course, this is all a big mess, madwifi isn't supported, and it would be great if ath5k worked.
When it does, remember to undo all the changes you made inthe various text files.

 

Thanks man. The thing is that it seems slow only when i'm surfing. Let's hope that the default driver will work eventually. Now the led indicates that wifi is working all the time. Will see. Thanks one more time man.

 

Just a summary and fixes for various problems that should appear with the ZG5/110/150 models:

Wireless
----------
To follow up on the previous posts, I tried the latest compat-wireless drivers (2.6.34 kernel). Still no luck, drops with high load. So far, madwifi-hal is the one working best for me.

Internal Mic
--------------
Mic wasn't working for me, as volume was very, very low.
Fix is installing pavucontrol, then "unlocking" the two mic channels and muting only one of them (left or right).

SD Cards
----------
In order for both left-side and right-side SD cards to work all the time, the kernel needs to boot with a particular module parameter (pciehp.pciehp_force=1).

Graphics
----------
There has always been a problem with using video memory. For best results, the following parameter needs to be passed to the kernel: enable_mtrr_cleanup (to confirm the fix, "cat /proc/mtrr" should show something different).
This means you need something like the following line in /etc/default/grub:

Code:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="enable_mtrr_cleanup pciehp.pciehp_force=1"

Flash
------
For better full-screen flash performance, create a file called /etc/adobe/mms.cfg, with the following line:

Code:

OverrideGPUValidation = 1

(From my experience, at least some of the same problems are present in several distributions and the fixes are the same...)

 

Don't forget the fan control too to turn it off except when it is needed.

 

I too are having problems with my wireless in ubuntu 10.04. On a madwifi snapshot myself at the moment, but I am wondering if it would be better just to replace the wireless card. Could anyone recommend a suitable one that works reliably?