[NBLUG/talk] Disappearing WiFi

[Liz Young]

Mark Osborne wrote:
> Hello,
> Ubuntu Edgy running on a Dell p4 Linksys card and router.
> Worked flawlessly for 3 months. Today, system does not recognize a
> wireless connection. 
> Pulled the board, rebooted, and one of the two ethernet connections
> drops out of the network. Ok, so it sees the Wireless card as an
> ethernet card? now....
> Reinstall the card, reboot, and the extra ethernet connection shows up.
> Replaced the WiFi card with an identical card, same scenario....
> 
> WiFi works as usual with the Mac.....
> 
> how can I convince linux that the card is indeed wireless?
> 
> thoughts?
> 
> need more info?


On my laptop, the wireless card has always been assigned and eth1 or 
eth2 interface name. I don't think it makes any difference if its eth0 
or wlan0 or whatever.

Are you using network-manager?  If so, the /etc/network/interfaces file 
must not contain anything (like a section for static IP). 
Network-manager and static IP's don't mix.

What does the iwlist command return?

I like to do a "dmesg | grep eth" to see what interface name is assigned 
   to each device.  Then I'll check with "grep eth(number from dmesg) 
/var/log/messages" for errors.

Hmmm, I was just going to go on about firmware loading, and realized 
there were some hiccups with the latest kernel updates from *buntu. 
Maybe you need to update/install the latest restricted-modules package 
to get the firmware for your card?

HTH,
Liz