[SOLVED] Kernel upgrade broke wireless- sort of.

[politenessman]

What does ifconfig bring up for the interfaces? That should certainly bring up the name you want to use to address it (potentially ath0, wlan0, eth1 - could be others I'm unaware of).

lo and eth0 only.
No wireless adapter at all.

Edit to add - it looks like its not configured. I'll see if I can get it configured

[TDave]

Just thinking a bit more about this...

One of the updates I definitely installed today was dbus related (granted, I can't remember the names of the dbus packages and their version numbers). Thinking back to the problem being focused on NetworkManager, NetworkManager communicates using dbus and hal (if I remember rightly...) - does anyone with any clue have any idea if that could be related or, more to the point, what I could run that could help diagnose this further?

Guess it's time to see if this is a reported bug by people who know more than me.

[LunaEqualsLuna]

Same problem here i just updated and now my wireless is broken >_>.

How do I undo this update. I really gotta start paying attention to these updates now and wait a few weeks before I update. I certainly will in the future once I get this wireless sorted out. Sort of a if it ain't broke don't fix it mentality. Because everything was running perfect and now this annoyance has occurred.

[politenessman]

ok, now I am getting really mad.
No wireless = no internet connection (I am writing this from another machine)
Every damn thing I've found so far insists on me downloading something and its all CLI - I have no clue about most of that stuff.
Can anyone tell me how to get this working again, or roll back the recent updates?

I am so screwed without a net connection on that machine.

[soro2005]

It may be dbus related, but definitely has to do with the kernel upgrade as well. I can use the old kernel and connect to the wireless router without a problem.

To use an older kernel version: Hit the <esc> key as soon as the Grub loader comes up (immediately after switching on the machine), then select a different kernel version from the list.

[TDave]

To use an older kernel version: Hit the <esc> key as soon as the Grub loader comes up (immediately after switching on the machine), then select a different kernel version from the list.

Yep, for some reason that option still isn't doing it for me, although quite why, I'm not sure. Even in the 'safe' mode on the older kernel it doesn't seem to bring any joy, although maybe I'll try that again just to be certain.

politenessman: Best I can suggest at this point is confirming or denying that the tip from soro2005 regarding the kernel selection at bootup works for you. As for 'downgrading' to what you had previously, my honest answer is that I don't know.

Anyone know if this has been raised as a bug already? I can't find anything obvious in my searches so far, but then I haven't used Launchpad much.

[politenessman]

To use an older kernel version: Hit the <esc> key as soon as the Grub loader comes up (immediately after switching on the machine), then select a different kernel version from the list.

I did not know that. Thank you! Worked like a charm and I am back to having internet connection again!

[soro2005]

Nice to be able to help with the easy advise. I'm sure somebody is looking into it. These things are usually fixed within a couple of hours.

[TDave]

Well...

It ain't necessarily clean, or tidy, but I found a workaround for this in the meantime that at least seems to get my unencrypted connections up and running, and that was to use the repository of packages for NetworkManager0.7 as per this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=797059

The usual caveats should obviously be taken with that, as mentioned in that thread.

It should also be noted that I cannot currently connect to the WPA network using the 'new and improved' NetworkManager which, it appears, is due to the choice of Encryption (TKIP etc) being lost from the NM options. I am going to look into workarounds for this shortly. I suffered this under OpenSuSE 11.0 as well (which ships NM7.0 as standard)

It connects to the open and WEP areas without issue though.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this from a stability point of view because of the problems I've encountered with WPA, but it might be worth a go.

[LunaEqualsLuna]

reverting to the old kernel did the trick. Changing the default kernal in /boot/grub/menu.lst from 0 to 2 made the changes permanent. until i figure out what went wrong I shall be sticking with the old kernel!