Restart Wireless Without Rebooting

[Derek Broughton]

Kenneth Loafman wrote:

> Periodically my wireless connection dies and nothing seems to restart it
> except the brain-dead Windows way of rebooting the whole system.  In a
> UNIX system, you should be able to restart anything except the kernel
> without a reboot.  I can't seem to figure out how.
> 
> Running 64-bit Ubuntu Feisty on a Dell 1501, ndiswrapper around bcmwl5
> driver, Network Manager, the rest pretty normal.  All up to date.
> 
> I have tried restarting the connection through Network Manager.  No go.
> 
> I have tried /etc/init.d/networking restart.  No go, of course.
> 
> I have used ndiswrapper to remove and reinstall the driver.  No go.
> 
> I have no hair to pull, or dead chicken to wave over my head while
> standing on one leg, so what magic incantation do I need to use?

"/etc/init.d/dbus restart" should do the job - but it's only slightly less
sledge-hammerish than rebooting (and after that, I find I have to restart
kde-guidance-powermanager, as it's lost any idea that my laptop has a
battery).

Does your system hibernate?  I find that hibernate/resume often kickstarts
my wlan (same hardware as yours).  One of these days I'll check out exactly
what it's doing and see if I can write a script...or maybe you will and
send it to me :-)
-- 
derek