FS#11200 - Internet connectivity loss

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Alain Delacu (al.delacu) - Tuesday, 12 August 2008, 17:54 GMT
Last edited by Aaron Griffin (phrakture) - Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 20:13 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category System
Status Closed
Assigned To Thomas Bächler (brain0)
Architecture i686
Severity High
Priority Normal
Reported Version None
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description: Certain apps become unresponsive/loose internet connectivity shortly after X is started. Issue appeared after updating to kernel26-2.6.26.2-1, related klibs, and ndiswrapper 1.53-1 (using Dell 1395 Wireless card aka Broadcom 4312 in an Inspiron 1525)

Most common manifestation: After doing a few menial tasks (e.g. a pacman -Syu), I open firefox. It browses a few sites before taking an inordinate amount of time downloading, to the point of being de facto stalled, but give no boilerplate or warning message stating a connectivity loss. I then attempt to open the wicd gui by clicking on the icon in the system tray, but that does not open. Command-line apps that require internet connectivity effectively stall out as well, but cannot be ended with a command-c keystroke.

Caveat: the freezing only appears after using an X app that accesses the internet. If X is not started or only terminal-based programs are used, no such freezing occurs.

I first noticed this behavoir after upgrading from the previous versions of the packages annoted below. However, the exact same behavoir appeared after making a clean install from 2008.6 to the latest packages and the appropriate ndiswrapper is only thereafter installed.

Additional info:
* packages (all from binary pkgs): kernel26-2.6.26.2-1, ndiswrapper and ndiswrapper-utils 1.51-1, wicd 1.4.1-4,
* logs show no abnormal activity


Steps to reproduce:
Upgrade to above packages. Go into X and surf on Firefox. Freezing should occur within a period of 15 minutes.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Aaron Griffin (phrakture)
Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 20:13 GMT
Reason for closing:  None
Additional comments about closing:  No longer an issue for reporter - switched to another driver
Comment by Glenn Matthys (RedShift) - Tuesday, 12 August 2008, 18:02 GMT
Can you test this using a wired (ethernet) connection instead of a wireless connection and see if you get the same result?
Comment by Alain Delacu (al.delacu) - Tuesday, 12 August 2008, 21:22 GMT
Edit: eventual seizure also occurs when using command-line programs, namely pacman.
Comment by Glenn Matthys (RedShift) - Tuesday, 12 August 2008, 23:01 GMT
So it has nothing to do with X, firefox, or any other X applications. Have you tested with wired networking?
Comment by Alain Delacu (al.delacu) - Wednesday, 13 August 2008, 03:03 GMT
It has not reproduced itself on a wired connection. I have tested wired connections using both /etc/rc.d/network as well as wicd.
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Wednesday, 13 August 2008, 08:45 GMT
You're using ndiswrapper for your network, which means loading a binary windows driver in your linux system. Isn't your bcm4312 supported by the b43 driver?
Comment by Alain Delacu (al.delacu) - Wednesday, 13 August 2008, 16:41 GMT
I have not gotten the b43 driver to work (yet, at least).
Comment by Luke Anderson (drcranium) - Monday, 18 August 2008, 13:52 GMT
I'm also getting the same problems. I'll startup and it will work for a few minutes. Then nothing. Any commands related to the network stall. I can't safely shutdown because netcfg2 tries to bring down the network before shutting down. I'm also using ndiswrapper with the dell 1390.

Luke
Comment by Patrick McCarty (pnorcks) - Monday, 18 August 2008, 23:57 GMT
I have the same problems with NDisWrapper 1.53 and the new 2.6.26.2-1 kernel. As a workaround I downgraded to NDisWrapper 1.52, and I haven't had problems since. Attached the the `dmesg' output I had every time network activity stalled. I don't know if this helps or not.
   ndis_errors.log (1.7 KiB)
Comment by Alain Delacu (al.delacu) - Tuesday, 19 August 2008, 03:17 GMT
I downgraded as well, which solved this as well as this bug: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/11217, which seemed to manifest itself occasionally as well.
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Thursday, 28 August 2008, 20:43 GMT
I'm using Dell Vostro 1400 with bcm4311-based Dell wireless card,
I have the latest kernel, standard b43 driver with broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5 firmware and no problems with wireless connection
(disconnections are very rare and no slowness at all),
I don't remember if the last kernel I tried with wireless was .26 but I may check it next week (I can access wireless only at work).
Comment by Jud (judfilm) - Thursday, 04 December 2008, 09:23 GMT
Does this still happen with kernel 2.6.27.7?
Comment by Alain Delacu (al.delacu) - Thursday, 04 December 2008, 19:35 GMT
(Un)fortunately this is no longer an issue for me. My fix: I now use the broadcom-wl package from the aur, which is both easier to deal with (no funky installation steps) and, as far as I have experienced, free of the above bugs.

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