Intermittant Wireless On Startup?

[ToyotaGuy23]

Sometimes after bootup, Network Manager doesn't show any wireless networks available. If I restart, usually the problem is solved, although not always.

My System:
DELL Inspiron 1721
Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
2.0 Ghz AMD
2 GB DDR 2
250 GB HD
Dell 1505 802.11 n
Broadcom 4328 10/100

Here is all the information that I can provide when the problem is happening:

I ran iwconfig:
lo no wireless extensions
eth0 no wireless extensions
pan0 no wireless extensions

Why is there no wlan0?

I ran sudo ifconfig wlan0 up:
wlan0: Error while getting interface flags: No such device

I ran lshw -C network:
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
*-network
description: Network controller
product: BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0b:00.0
version: 03
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0 module=ssb
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
logical name: eth0
version: 02
serial: 00:1d:09:af:31:a4
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=b44 driverversion=2.0 latency=64 module=ssb multicast=yes
*-network DISABLED
description: Ethernet interface
physical id: 1
logical name: pan0
serial: b6:bd:cb:02:b6:24
capabilities: ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=bridge driverversion=2.3 firmware=N/A multicast=yes

I ran ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1d:09:af:31:a4
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:21

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:326 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:326 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:26136 (26.1 KB) TX bytes:26136 (26.1 KB)

[ToyotaGuy23]

bump?

help?

[ToyotaGuy23]

Here is the solution:

I had a 'race' condition.
This means that the b43 driver and ndiswrapper were competing for the connection.

Thanks to Sylphid in the IRC, I successfully did this and it worked!

I compared the output of lshw -C network from when it was working and when it was not. That is how the 'race' condition was discovered. Thanks, Sylphid!

So we needed to blacklist the b43 because it was unreliable on my system.

matt@matt-laptop:~$ sudo -i
[sudo] password for matt:
root@matt-laptop:~# echo 'blacklist b43' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
root@matt-laptop:~# exit