Sistemas Operacionais -> Ubuntu -> Turning Wireless on Causes Laptop to Freeze on Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal? part 2

Edit /etc/default/grub and change to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="pci=use_crs quiet splash"

Sistemas Operacionais -> Ubuntu -> Turning Wireless on Causes Laptop to Freeze on Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

Downgrading network-manager to a version from Jaunty didn't work. However, I've noticed that ifplugd package was not installed on my machine. After installation of this package hot plugging/unplugging of network cable became possible and didn't cause any issues.

It seems like ifplugd is not being installed with Karmic by default.

Excuse me, I'm wrong: ifplugd didn't help! The issue still exists!

This issue is generated also by desktop version of Ubuntu 9.10, not only UNR. It could be easily generated using live boot from USB flash without installing the Ubunto to hard drive:

1. Boot from live USB with Ethernet cable plugged;
2. Unplug Ethernet cable -- system crashes!

lspci | grep -i network
01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)

See also #469313 - doesn't see wireless. Probably, same problem

It is definitely a bug and should be fixed... Please provide information about your hardware - maybe it helps developers to fix the bug.

Run:

lspci | grep -i net

In my case it returns:

01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev ff)

Also, determine BIOS version by running:

sudo dmidecode

First lines of the output, in my case, are:

SMBIOS 2.4 present.
17 structures occupying 818 bytes.
Table at 0x000FC520.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
Version: 361A0 Ver. F.15
Release Date: 08/21/2009
Address: 0xF0000
Runtime Size: 64 kB
ROM Size: 1024 kB

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To cause the crash:

1. Start machine with cable plugged in but out of range of any configured wireless networks.
2. Log in and unplug the network cable. Machine hangs and must be powered down to restart.

To see network-manager not pick up the wired connection:

1. Start machine with cable unplugged and out of range of any configured wireless networks.
2. Log in and plug cable in. network-manager does not notice this and the wired network remains down.

Looks like this bug is fixed in karmic-proposed, there is also a workaround using "pci=use_crs" as a kernel parameter. Details here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/407824

Sistemas Operacionais -> Ubuntu -> Turning Wireless on Causes Laptop to Freeze on Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal? My Work Around

Work Around

After I was able to get Xubuntu to successfully boot. I proceeded to install it. (for testing purpose I enabled the wireless radio from Bios and had the issue the freshly install Xubuntu 11.04 freeze at login screen (again) disabled it and everything worked fine (But no wireless)

Here is what I now did to fix the issue on my laptop. I did not have this issue on 10.10 mostly because that version of Kubuntu did not ship with the opensource broadcom drivers. I had to use the binary only driver from broadcom, hence the idea was to revert back to that setup.

first I installed the broadcom-sta-common (It provide a binary only closed source driver for broadcom)

sudo apt-get install broadcom-sta-common


Once installed, I edited the following file /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf

NB its always a good thing to backup before making any change to config file.
backup with this command

cp /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf-orig

In case things gets jammed up and you want to revert, you can easily do so with

cp /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf-orig /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf

kdesudo kate /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf


NB gnome user should use gtksudo gedit in place of kdesudo kate (and if you are like me, you can use ever reliable vim )

Anyway I blacklisted the brcm80211 open source broadcom driver by adding this line to, /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf blacklist brcm80211 Before the last line. When done, everything looked like this

# wl module from Broadcom conflicts with ssb
# We must blacklist the following modules:
blacklist b44
blacklist b43legacy
blacklist b43
blacklist ssb
blacklist brcm80211
install wl /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install wl $CMDLINE_OPTS

I saved the file and then edited this file /etc/modules (again backup before editing)

cp /etc/modules /etc/modules-orig

By adding the module for the closed source (freedom hating but stable) broadcom driver so it is loaded at every system boot

I added lw to the end of /etc/modules so the file looks like this

# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.

lp
lw

Saved the file, exited, and rebooted this time with the wireless on to test if the issue as been fixed. The laptop rebooted fine, no issue, but still no wireless. Then I started the Kubuntu additional driver tool or kdesudo jockey-kde (from commandline on Kubuntu) or gtksudo jockey (from commandline on Ubuntu) which searched and informed me I needed to activate some proprietary drivers to make the wireless card work properly. I enabled them, It did its magic and voilà the wireless card came on. I was able to enable and disable it without the system kernel panicing.

I rebooted my laptop and there was no problem at all, everything worked just like it did on 10.10.
I explained the same step to some dude on irc having similar problem and my solution worked for him so I decided to share in case anyone is having such problems.

I hope someone finds this useful.