WG111v3 torment in Lucid

[2lood]

Hi everyone!

I'm fighting with my wireless adapter over 6 months now and I always loose. The battle begun when I updated my Lucid to kernel 2.6.32-22. Since then my wireless WG111v3 USB adapter is unreliable; sometimes is operational and sometimes not - there is no logical pattern to predict this. Mostly a reboot is required to get it work but sometimes 2 or 3 reboots in a row.

So here's what it looks like when it's not working:


# sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 123

dmesg output regarding adapter:


phy0: hwaddr 00:1e:2a:xx:xx:xx, RTL8187BvE V0 + rtl8225z2, rfkill mask 2
rtl8187: wireless switch is off

Note that wireless switch thing is OFF, but my adapter has no switch of any kind on it.
So I found out that kernels above 2.6.32-21 include rfkill as a component that controls wireless adapters state, but mostly for laptops. Then I checked some rfkill commands and tried:


# rfkill list
0: wlan0
Soft blocked: No
Hard blocked: Yes

I assume that this is that 'rfkill mask 2' in dmesg output - binary bits: soft(0) hard(1) = 2. My guess is that mask should be 0. Then I tried:


# sudo rfkill unblock 0

Unfortunately that does nothing; wlan0 is still Hard blocked. If I use udevadm monitor with command above I get:


KERNEL[1273271499.836087] change /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/ieee80211/phy0/rfkill0 (rfkill)
UDEV [1273271499.836347] change /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/ieee80211/phy0/rfkill0 (rfkill)

Is that where is the problem, ie. the adapter is unblocked(KERNEL) then blocked(UDEV) again?

When adapter is not blocked by rfkill, if I unplug it and then plug it in again it gets blocked and therefore is unusable.

Some senior linux users said that this could be a kernel bug and only a kernel recompilation will fix but that is beyond my abilities.
I hoped that kernel developers would be aware of that problem and had it fixed in kernel 2.6.32-23 but the problem still persists. Maybe it's not the kernel bug then. Maybe it can be solved by a simple change of one line in some config file, I don't know.

I started to learn linux 8 months ago so I'm very green and all my resource of knowledge is from internet, which is offlimits if my adapter is not working.
And by saying that I beg for tolerance If I missed to write something crucial.

Thanks.

[Snowhog]

Until you get this resolved, just boot using the previous kernel.

[2lood]

Until you get this resolved, just boot using the previous kernel.


Yeah, or even better: I can connect online via VMWare->WinXp ;D

Just updated to kernel 2.6.32-24 but it's the same old story again ....

I can't stop to wonder; where is, in fact, the problem?

[GreyGeek]

Have you tried the ndiswrapper method?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=615471&highlight=wg111v3

I've modified it a bit:


open a konsole
sudo su -
apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9
wget http://www.avengergear.com/upload/WG111v3.tar.bz2
tar xvvf WG111v3.tar.bz2
ndiswrapper -i ../WG111/WG111v3.inf
modprobe ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper -m
depmod -a
exit

You may have to reboot if the wireless doesn't connect.

You can also download the WG111v3.inf and WG111v3.sys files from here (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?mode=attach&id=7830&sid=4e97a461a26f6e0c400eab36d472e47f).

[2lood]

Have you tried the ndiswrapper method?

No, not yet! I wanted to leave that as a last option cause I'm not sure if that's a driver problem. Besides I've read on ubuntu forums that distros 9.10 and above support my adapter 'out of the box'.
But if all else fails, I will surely give it a try.

Thanx.