BCM43xx Wifi connection randomly disconnected in 9.10

[chrisblue]

Whilst not exactly a fix I did come up with a workaround for my issue.

My wifi connection is only used to get program guide data for my mythbuntu backend. It usually holds 8 days of guide data so if I don't have a wifi connection for a few hours it is not an issue.

What I did was put together a basic script that pings the router and in the event that it doesn't get a response does a networkmanager restart.

Dropped this into the hourly cron jobs and it successfully brings the wifi back up without me even noticing most of the time.

Acknowledged this wouldn't work as well for ppl that are running more wifi time critical apps though.

[Canada Lee]

This is an update about the random disconnects, in case this can benefit anyone else.

I thought it might have been the network manager periodically scanning to see what available wifi is in the area, and it randomly hanging...like when it sends a command to scan for avail wifi, it hangs, or maybe waiting for a response, it waits forever.

But I doubt that is the issue.

So far since I diagnosed my problem and solved it by playing a MP3 forever using rhythmnbox, my prob has stayed in the closet and has never shown its face. So thats a few months of it being suppressed.

I recently connected to my net using the ethernet cable, and turned off my wifi radio, as well as right clicking on Network Manager and turning off Enable Wireless.

Being as I was using ethernet, and all wireless was off, I thought, HEY I should be able to QUIT rhythmnbox now...I dont need to keep the wifi AWAKE...

Surely enough, minutes later everything was sleeping...the little led light by the ethernet cable was lit solid...and the display was showing a still image of what was displayed last when it WAS awake. Swiped my finger cross the touchpad...and immediately the display updated...this confirmed my suspicion that it was sleeping...then the ethernet light starts flashing...I watch the display and all the speed counters are dropping to ZERO...then a couple of minutes it starts making connections and the speed counters start increasing...

So, this random disconnects of mine, due to some kind of inactivity timer is not the BROADCOM driver...I thought the broadcom driver might have been written to be power saving or something...But when I right click on Network Manager and click on Connection Information, it shows the ETH0 connector using a different driver, not a broadcom one...

So this prob is either some kinda power savings mode, or inactivity for all communications. Not just broadcom, not just wifi... A little more system wide than that.

In my Ubuntu, I have turned off all forms of power savings I can find...spin down drives...turn of monitor...suspend etc etc.

And being a laptop, it may be a part of the BIOS. I have flashed the BIOS with the latest available from the Acer website. And going into the BIOS settings, there are no ACPI or power savings settings anywhere. So they do not allow you to change them.

Playing an MP3 repeatedly keeps the system awake when using the ethernet as well...so I am still forced to play a MP3 to solve my prob whether I use wireless or wired.

Ubuntu may not even have any control over this problem if its embedded inside the BIOS itself.

Hope this helps someone.

[ePierre]

Thanks for your answers and your feedbacks.

This is a very strange issue... and I kinda gave up, installing the latest Ubuntu. It seems to work much better, I didn't experienced a lot of disconnections since I updated.

[atulkakrana]

Command for turning power monitoring off is

sudo iwconfig eth1 power off

your adapter could be different, Use 'ifconfig' to find correct adapter

[ePierre]

Hi atulkakrana,

If I type iwconfig, here is the result I have before trying your command:


lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"XXX"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:22:CF:08:CF:F6
Bit Rate=36 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=61/70 Signal level=-49 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


So apparently the power management is already off.

When I try your command, I have this:


$ sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off
Error for wireless request "Set Power Management" (8B2C) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not supported.


So I don't think it's related to power management.

Thanks anyway!

[Ryzzen]

I've been suffering this exact same problem. You'd think there would be a legitimate fix by now.

Anyway, I came up with a slightly more elegant solution than running Rhythmbox all the time, since it uses more memory and cpu than I'd care to give up on my tiny netbook. Plus, I don't like the tray icon being there all the time.

First I created a one-second silent .ogg file in Audacity. To do so, simply start Audacity, click on Generate > Silence..., enter 000,001 seconds, and export it as an .ogg file. I saved mine as silence.ogg and moved it to /usr/share/sounds/.

ogg123 is a command-line ogg-player that should come with every system. It uses a very minimal amount of cpu and ram, so it's perfect for running in the background and playing, well, silence. The easiest way I've found to implement this is to create a .desktop file and add it to /etc/xdg/autostart/, like so:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Keep Alive
Comment=Prevent wireless from shutting off when inactive
Exec=ogg123 -r -q /usr/share/sounds/silence.ogg
Terminal=false
Type=Application
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

This will run every time you log in, so you shouldn't have to worry about it ever again. Plus, it doesn't interfere with any other music you may want to play.


Hope this helps somebody.

If anyone has a better way of doing this, let me know.

[maestrobwh1]

This is STILL an issue with Ubuntu 12.04. Nothing REALLY works that addresses the actual problem. One suggestion that does help is installing WICD and removing network-manager. I don't think network-manager is the issue but wicd seems to reconnect more reliably, there is box to check under preferences that when enabled, will reconnect with a connection loss.

I used to use ndiswrapper back in the Dapper 6.06 days. It never disconnected, and fwcutter worked okay in Lucid, seemed slower but reliable. The issue is somewhat annoying but it is on an old acer that I don't use frequently.

[wildmanne39]

If a post is older than a year or so and hasn't had a new reply in that time, instead of replying to it, create a new thread. In the software world, a lot can change in a very short time, and doing things this way makes it more likely that you will find the best information. You may link to the original discussion in the new thread if you think it may be helpful.