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Bug 675017 - After update to networkmanager 0.9.4.0-4 wireless strength fails to show in KDE panel
After update to networkmanager 0.9.4.0-4 wireless strength fails to show in K...
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: NetworkManager
Classification: Platform
Component: Wi-Fi
0.9.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Dan Williams
NetworkManager maintainer(s)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2012-04-28 12:07 UTC by Mike Cloaked
Modified: 2012-09-21 19:01 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Screenshot showing no wireless signal in panel icons but strong signal in information popup (40.38 KB, image/jpeg)
2012-04-28 12:07 UTC, Mike Cloaked
Details

Description Mike Cloaked 2012-04-28 12:07:17 UTC
Created attachment 213019 [details]
Screenshot showing no wireless signal in panel icons but strong signal in information popup

Networkmanager 0.9.2 was working fine with ipw2200 in a Dell D610 running KDE in arch linux - upgrading networkmanager initially to 0.9.4.0-2 failed with ipw2200 until wext was re-enabled in version 0.9.4.0-4 when wireless again worked and established a normal connection. However the wireless signal strength indication in the KDE panel (kdeplasma-applets-networkmanagement) did not show at all despite a strong signal. It was important to try and see if it was the kde wireless display icon or networkmanager where the bug might be.

The appearance of the icon can be seen in the attached screenshot image as a "dot" with greyed out arcs above it instead of the arcs showing as bright with the strong signal.

I therefore installed network-manager-applet, and put it on the KDE panel, but this also shows no signal - it seems therefore that it is neither kdeplasma-applets-networkmanagement, nor network-manager-applet at fault. So it seems that the wireless connection is fine managed by networkmanager appears to work, but the display icon on the panel or the link where the data about the connection held by networkmanager and its transmission to the display is not set up correctly - however this problem does not appear with all wireless hardware but only (for me) my machine with ipw2200 - the same setup on another laptop using the iwl4965 driver is fine and does show the correct strong signal strength at the same location when connected to the same Access Point!

The wireless detail listed by iwconfig looks OK despite the networkmanager applet icon showing incorrectly.

eth1 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"xxxxxxxx" 
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.422 GHz Access Point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx 
Bit Rate:36 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=8/0 
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality=86/100 Signal level=-29 dBm Noise level=-90 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:1 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:2

sensitive data above have been replaced with "x"s.

Hence this appears to be a display bug specifically for the ipw2200 wireless chip since another laptop also running the same setup but with a different wireless chip works without any problem and displays the signal strength correctly at the same physical location.

In the attached screenshot one also can see that the wireless connection strength is showing zero on both the kde network icon and 6 icons to its left the network-manager-applet icon also showing zero strength, but the connection details in the open window above it showing strong signal for "mdc-guest" to which I am currently connected.

I don't know if this adds anything useful but I also ran nm-applet in a terminal:

[mike@lapmike2 ~]$ nm-applet
** Message: applet now removed from the notification area

(nm-applet:4863): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_scale_simple: assertion `dest_width > 0' failed
** Message: applet now embedded in the notification area

I tried adjusting the kde panel height but that made no difference to the displayed icon for either kdeplasma-applets-networkmanagement or the nm-applet.
Comment 1 Mike Cloaked 2012-04-28 12:23:10 UTC
One additional comment - in the screenshot the nm-applet shows the signal bars as light grey - when the signal is displayed correctly they would fill as blue.
Comment 2 Dan Williams 2012-04-28 17:52:05 UTC
When you see no signal strength, can you run 'nmcli dev wifi list iface eth1' and report what the output is for the AP marked "ACTIVE"?

Also, what kernel version do you have?
Comment 3 Mike Cloaked 2012-04-28 20:18:25 UTC
[mike@lapmike2 ~]$ nmcli dev wifi list iface eth1
SSID                              BSSID               MODE             FREQ       RATE       SIGNAL   SECURITY   ACTIVE  
'mdc-guest'                       00:1F:1F:D0:2E:80   Infrastructure   2422 MHz   54 MB/s    99       WPA2       no      


[mike@lapmike2 ~]$ uname -r
3.3.3-1-ARCH
Comment 4 Mike Cloaked 2012-04-28 20:22:23 UTC
It is odd that all the ssid in the list have "no" for active (I only copied the line from the ssid that I am connected to) - yet the signal is connected and I am typing this with that wireless connected laptop and there is no wired connection!
Comment 5 Mike Cloaked 2012-04-30 20:51:30 UTC
Behaviour is the same with kernel 3.3.4-1-ARCH
Comment 6 Jiri Klimes 2012-05-02 09:56:48 UTC
ACTIVE column says that you are connected to that AP. So, "yes" will be only for one AP, others have "no", which means you are not connected to those APs.

The AP you list have a very strong signal, but it looks like it is not the one you are connected to.
Are there more AP with the 'mdc-guest' SSID?
Comment 7 Mike Cloaked 2012-05-02 19:11:22 UTC
I actually do have two AP's here with the same ssid - I will show here the full output from which you will see that there are "no" APs which show with "yes" in the entire set of visible APs.  Yet I am most certainly connected to mdc-guest as you will see from the iwconfig command!

That is what puzzles me - there is clearly a problem somewhere!

[mike@lapmike2 ~]$ nmcli dev wifi list iface eth1
SSID                              BSSID               MODE             FREQ       RATE       SIGNAL   SECURITY   ACTIVE  
'SKY2A71E'                        7C:03:4C:92:A7:1F   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    80       WPA WPA2   no      
'mdc-guest'                       00:22:6B:64:AA:1A   Infrastructure   2422 MHz   54 MB/s    70       WPA2       no      
'mdc-guest'                       00:1F:1F:D0:2E:80   Infrastructure   2422 MHz   54 MB/s    100      WPA2       no      
'TP-LINK 02'                      74:EA:3A:BC:78:78   Infrastructure   2437 MHz   54 MB/s    60       WPA        no      
'SKY39741'                        5C:D9:98:C2:51:4F   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    55       WPA WPA2   no      
'BTHub3-33QS'                     00:FE:F4:79:F5:B0   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    49       WPA WPA2   no      
'TALKTALK-CB71B1'                 1C:7E:E5:CB:71:B1   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    42       WPA WPA2   no      
'O2wirelessED1215'                00:26:44:ED:12:15   Infrastructure   2437 MHz   54 MB/s    39       WPA WPA2   no      
'O2wirelessF30AD3'                00:26:44:F3:0A:D3   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    37       WPA WPA2   no      
'TiscaliF23645'                   00:01:E3:F2:36:45   Infrastructure   2432 MHz   54 MB/s    34       WPA WPA2   no      
'BROWN'                           E0:46:9A:00:70:40   Infrastructure   2442 MHz   54 MB/s    40       WEP        no      
'Belkin54g'                       00:11:50:86:32:75   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    34       WEP        no      
'BTOpenzone-H'                    02:FE:F4:79:F5:B0   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    49       --         no      
'BTFON'                           12:FE:F4:79:F5:B0   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    49       --         no      
'BTHub3-P5NT'                     80:B6:86:FE:29:6E   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    37       WPA WPA2   no      
'BTFON'                           8A:B6:86:FE:29:68   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    34       --         no      
'BTOpenzone-H'                    8A:B6:86:FE:29:6F   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    34       --         no      
'ThomsonB70E74'                   00:26:44:B7:0E:74   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    50       WPA WPA2   no


[root@lapmike2 ~]# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"mdc-guest"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422 GHz  Access Point: 00:1F:1F:D0:2E:80   
          Bit Rate:24 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   Sensitivity=8/0  
          Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=77/100  Signal level=-27 dBm  Noise level=-90 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:1  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

You can see from the access point mac address that I am connected to the stronger of the two APs with ssid mdc-guest - and yet it is showing as not active - very weird. Whatever is leading to this situation is presumably also the reason that the panel icon shows no strength?
Comment 8 Mike Cloaked 2012-05-03 09:13:00 UTC
Just to highlight the difference between the ipw2200 problem raised in this bug report and NM running on a machine with the same o/s and same desktop setup, I ran the same command on a different laptop in the same physical location but this machine has iwl4965 wireless and not ipw2200 - the same kernel as the problem machine though 64 bit.  The result shows the connected AP as active and this machine has the same setup as the problem machine - 

[mike@lapmike3 aur]$ nmcli dev wifi list iface wlan0
SSID                              BSSID               MODE             FREQ       RATE       SIGNAL   SECURITY   ACTIVE  
'mdc-guest'                       00:22:6B:64:AA:1A   Infrastructure   2422 MHz   54 MB/s    77       WPA2       no      
'SKY39741'                        5C:D9:98:C2:51:4F   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    40       WPA WPA2   no      
'O2wirelessF30AD3'                00:26:44:F3:0A:D3   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    34       WPA WPA2   no      
'mdc'                             00:22:6B:64:AA:1B   Infrastructure   5180 MHz   54 MB/s    34       WPA2       no      
'BTHomeHub2-Q2TP'                 00:24:2B:2A:05:BB   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    19       WPA WPA2   no      
'SKY2A71E'                        7C:03:4C:92:A7:1F   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    27       WPA WPA2   no      
'BROWN'                           E0:46:9A:00:70:40   Infrastructure   2442 MHz   54 MB/s    20       WEP        no      
'Belkin54g'                       00:11:50:86:32:75   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    20       WEP        no      
'BTFON'                           02:24:2B:2A:05:BD   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    30       --         no      
'BTFON'                           12:FE:F4:79:F5:B0   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    20       --         no      
'BTOpenzone-H'                    02:24:2B:2A:05:BC   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    27       --         no      
'mdc-guest'                       00:1F:1F:D0:2E:80   Infrastructure   2422 MHz   54 MB/s    87       WPA2       yes     
'TP-LINK 02'                      74:EA:3A:BC:78:78   Infrastructure   2437 MHz   54 MB/s    50       WPA        no      
'BTHub3-33QS'                     00:FE:F4:79:F5:B0   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    20       WPA WPA2   no      
'TALKTALK-CB71B1'                 1C:7E:E5:CB:71:B1   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    19       WPA WPA2   no      
'O2wirelessED1215'                00:26:44:ED:12:15   Infrastructure   2437 MHz   54 MB/s    17       WPA WPA2   no      
'BTOpenzone-H'                    02:FE:F4:79:F5:B0   Infrastructure   2412 MHz   54 MB/s    15       --         no      
'BTFON'                           8A:B6:86:FE:29:68   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    15       --         no      
'BTOpenzone-H'                    8A:B6:86:FE:29:6F   Infrastructure   2462 MHz   54 MB/s    14 

Here we see the AP with the strong signal is indeed listed as "yes" - so this points clearly to the problem related to using ipw2200 - if there are any other diagnostics that I can run to give focus as to where the problem lies within NM I will be happy to test and report back.
Comment 9 Dan Williams 2012-05-04 19:40:15 UTC
This turns out to be a bug in NetworkManager.

ipw2x00 supports minimal bits of the nl80211 API, basically just capability reporting.  It does not actually support anything useful with nl80211, so we should still really be using WEXT with it.  Arguably the switch for nl80211 shouldn't have been thrown for ipw2x00 until it was actually usable with nl80211, but it was.

So NM detects that the driver supports nl80211 and then asks for the associated AP, signal strength, etc using nl80211, which the driver doesn't actually support.  NM needs to match the logic that wpa_supplicant uses to determine whether to fall back to WEXT.

Fix is on the 'wifi-fallback' branch in git.
Comment 10 Mike Cloaked 2012-05-05 10:32:05 UTC
Dan, Thank you for that explanation of where the problem lies. I guess that a "fixed" version of networkmanager will at some point emerge as the released version giving a temporary fallback to use wext for ipw2200 until the driver eventually is "fixed" to support nl80211 (if it hopefully happens in a future driver update?) - only then I guess will NM be changed to use nl80211 for this wireless chip?

Does that mean this bug report should be regarded as closed at this stage or held open until the fix is in the released version?
Comment 11 Mike Cloaked 2012-09-11 19:15:04 UTC
Yesterday I updated my system to networkmanager 0.9.6.0-1 and this does show correct signal strength for the ipw2200 wireless - however this version has a serious problem in that although the wireless connection appears correct from the output of ifconfig and iwconfig - but the connection runs very very slow and then hangs within seconds despite the connection parameters seeming to be ok for browser connections, ssh connections, or package update connections! That is a different issue but means I can't check/test further until a working version of NM is available for this machine (The same version of NM works fine on a different laptop with different wireless chipset) - somewhat frustrating!
Comment 12 Mike Cloaked 2012-09-12 19:53:33 UTC
The same machine as was used for comment #11 booted and worked normally today - so the intermittent wireless connection may be a hardware issue - I am replacing the wireless card and when it is delivered and installed will check again - if the wireless connection then remains working then I will report back at that time with a view to closing this bug report.
Comment 13 Mike Cloaked 2012-09-21 19:01:46 UTC
I replaced the wireless card with a new one (Intel Pro 2200BG) and since then wireless has worked flawlessly - so I will happily close this bug as it seems the problems I had in comment #11 were due to a flaky wireless hardware chip.