Wireless / WiFi stopped working after Ubuntu 11.10 upgrade

[siddi]

How about an Acer Aspire 5570.... Is it the same procedure?

[siddi]

I hope this helps someone out there, here's my story and how I fixed it.

After I upgrade from 11.04 to 11.10 my WiFi went out during installation and never came back on, even after the install completed. My netbook is a Sony VAIO VPCM111AX, I was familiar with the the ralink wireless issues so I had many rt2 and rt3 wireless drivers blacklisted. So I went back and unblacklisted these drivers.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

This didn't solve the problem. I went back to find my specific driver by this:

lspci | grep work

and I found that my driver was RT3090



Upon some investigation I found that 11.10 doesn't support some wireless drivers.
Before proceeding I wanted to check a few more things such as

sudo lshw -C network

Then:

lsmod

Lastly I checked this:

rfkill list all

If the "no"'s here are yes's for you run this:

rfkill unblock all

After all this I found an old version of the rt3090 driver here:

https://launchpad.net/~markus-tisoft/+archive/rt3090/+files/rt3090-dkms_2.3.1.3-0ubuntu0~ppa1_all.deb

I installed the driver and restarted the computer and all is well. I haven't had to reblacklist the other ralink drivers, everything seems to be working well.

I hope this helps someone because this problem drove me mad.

Just for reference: I did find that some computers needed to blacklist certain drivers depending on computer models:



There are a lot of other drivers that need to be blacklisted depending on the type of computer you have and others need to install older versions of the wireless driver (as I did) to allow this to work.

I got this after the lspci | grep work
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 02)
siddharth@siddharth-Aspire-5570:~$ sudo lshw -C network
[sudo] password for siddharth:
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: 88E8038 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller
vendor: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: eth0
version: 14
serial: 00:16:36:8a:50:65
capacity: 100Mbit/s
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=sky2 driverversion=1.28 firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair
resources: irq:44 memory:44000000-44003fff ioport:2000(size=256)
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
logical name: wlan0
version: 02
serial: 00:18:de:5d:03:ad
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwl3945 driverversion=3.0.0-12-generic firmware=15.32.2.9 ip=192.168.1.2 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
resources: irq:45 memory:44100000-44100fff
siddharth@siddharth-Aspire-5570:~$

Lsmod gave me this

Module Size Used by
bnep 17923 2
rfcomm 38408 8
parport_pc 32114 0
ppdev 12849 0
gspca_vc032x 31999 0
gspca_main 27610 1 gspca_vc032x
videodev 85626 1 gspca_main
joydev 17393 0
snd_hda_codec_si3054 12864 1
snd_hda_codec_realtek 254125 1
acer_wmi 23302 0
sparse_keymap 13658 1 acer_wmi
pcmcia 39822 0
snd_hda_intel 24262 5
snd_hda_codec 91754 3 snd_hda_codec_si3054,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda _intel
snd_hwdep 13276 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm 80468 5 snd_hda_codec_si3054,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_seq_midi 13132 0
snd_rawmidi 25241 1 snd_seq_midi
btusb 18160 2
snd_seq_midi_event 14475 1 snd_seq_midi
tifm_7xx1 12937 0
bluetooth 148839 23 bnep,rfcomm,btusb
tifm_core 15040 1 tifm_7xx1
yenta_socket 27428 0
snd_seq 51567 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
pcmcia_rsrc 18367 1 yenta_socket
psmouse 73673 0
pcmcia_core 21511 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,pcmcia_rsrc
serio_raw 12990 0
snd_timer 28932 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device 14172 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
arc4 12473 2
iwl3945 73329 0
i915 505108 3
iwl_legacy 71499 1 iwl3945
mac80211 272785 2 iwl3945,iwl_legacy
snd 55902 18 snd_hda_codec_si3054,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda _intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi ,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
drm_kms_helper 32889 1 i915
drm 192226 4 i915,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit 13199 1 i915
soundcore 12600 1 snd
cfg80211 172392 3 iwl3945,iwl_legacy,mac80211
snd_page_alloc 14115 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
video 18908 1 i915
wmi 18744 1 acer_wmi
binfmt_misc 17292 1
lp 17455 0
parport 40930 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp
sky2 49317 0

And after the rfkill comand.... All the answers are 'no'

What do i do?

[cirelosborn]

Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG is your wireless card. If blacklisting didn't work then find an older version of the intel driver "3945ABG" and install it. Hope this helps.

[siddi]

I haven't tried blacklisting cos am not sure what procedure i have to follow completely.

Pls help

[acme_labs]

So here it is- the HP dv5020us laptop, complete with non functioning wireless router, it does not even look for a driver! Help!
At my prompt, I typed in this:

xxxx-Pavilion-dv5000-EP411UA-ABA:~$ lspci | grep work

and I got this

06:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

What next?

[Cyberponcho]

I wrote a little tutorial on this issue on my blog, it did work perfectly well for me, maybe it can help someone here too

[siddi]

Mine says soft blocked no..... But still the wifi signal keeps dropping every few minutes.... sometimes every few seconds...

can there be a driver error?

[shawnat88]

Worked perfectly on my mother's Compaq-Mini-CQ10-400. Thank you so much.

[cirelosborn]

The dropping of the wifi signal every few minutes is a classic sign of switching between two or more wireless drivers. You need to blacklist all wifi drivers that your not using and it should stop dropping the signal.

[borivoje]

This really works. Thanks a lot!
Actually, Ubuntu 11.10 has no problem with the rt2860sta driver. It connects and works decently. But what I was doing is recompile the 3.0.0.16 kernel because I needed to patch it after buying Genius EasyPen i405X graphic tablet, which had pressure problem in the current kernel. I got pen to working but I lost connectivity with my rt3090sta wireless card.
Tried a lot of stuff but this solves the issue.