Wireless network problem after upgrade to 8.04

[Paul Johnson]

This is leading back to some basic questions about Upstart and service
management.  See below.

On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 12:31 PM, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> Paul Johnson wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 8:08 AM, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca>
>> wrote:
>>> Ken McLennan wrote:
>>>
>>>> G'day there Paul,
>>> ...
>>>>> So in the terminal again, make sure the network-manager is running
>>>>>
>>>>> # /etc/init.d/network-manager restart
>>>>>
>>>>     I don't have a 'network-manager' there, only a 'networking' entry.
>>>> Is that the same?
>>>
>>> Ahem.  Paul, network-manager doesn't start out of init.d, it starts from
>>> dbus:  "sudo /etc/dbus-1/event.d/25NetworkManager restart"
>>>
>>
>> Au contraire, mon brother! :)
>>
>> At least for me, there is there is a script in /etc/init.d
>
> OK, then, "the network-manager package no longer installs anything
> in /etc/init.d". :-)  If you have "dlocate" installed, it would be
> informative to run "dlocate /etc/init.d/network-manager" to see just where
> yours came from.  Anyway, Ken probably doesn't have it, as it moved into
> dbus a release or two back.

Well, recall I'm upstream from you with the NetworkManager 0.7svn  (
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=797059 ) , and that's where
it comes from.  Look at the last page worth of output from dpkg -L
network-manager:

/etc
/etc/NetworkManager
/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections
/etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d
/etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/01ifupdown
/etc/init.d
/etc/init.d/network-manager
/etc/nm-system-settings.conf
/etc/dbus-1
/etc/dbus-1/system.d
/etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf
/etc/dbus-1/system.d/nm-dhcp-client.conf
/etc/dbus-1/system.d/nm-dispatcher.conf
/etc/dbus-1/system.d/nm-system-settings.conf
/usr/share/doc/network-manager/TODO
/usr/share/doc/network-manager/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/network-manager/README
/usr/share/doc/network-manager/changelog.Debian.gz
/etc/dbus-1/event.d/26NetworkManagerDispatcher
/etc/dbus-1/event.d/25NetworkManager


The two daemon files, /etc/init.d/network-manager and
/etc/dbus-1/even.d/25NetworkManager are almost identical, except for
top matter. So I think it is just a packaging difference / mistake.
Here's a puzzler, though.  /etc/sbus-1/event.d/25NetowrkManager has
this comment at the top:


 NetworkManager	NetworkManager daemon
#				Daemon for automatically switching network
#				connections to the best available connection.
#				This file should be placed in /etc/init.d.

Why put that precious thing under /etc/dbus-1/events.d, not
/etc/init.d ?  Upstart magic?

>
>>>>     If it's any use, this is the result of stopping & starting the
>>>> init.d/networking command:
>>> ...
>>>> wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
>>>> wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
>>>> Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:19:d2:75:cf:ff
>>>> Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:19:d2:75:cf:ff
>>>> Sending on   Socket/fallback
>>>> Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
>>>>     SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.
>>>
>>> That looks rather serious.

Well, I definitely see the SET failed on device wlan0 message.  I've
seen that for months.

I don't see the wmaster0 errors now, however.

But, the "networking" daemon probably has nothing to do with wireless
control.   At least on Fedora, one wanted the generic old network
daemon turned off where possible to stop the interference it causes
with NetworkManager.  The problem was that the upgrade from F7 to F8
did not turn off network service before turning on NetworkManager.  In
reading Ubuntu /etc/init.d/networking, it appears to me that this
service should not be activated at start time, because it will
frustrate NetworkManager.  But I'm still new here :<

I've been doing a little reading and I see that Ubuntu created
"Upstart" as a replacement for sysvinit.  Fedora's going that way, so
it must be good... My Ubuntu system starts in runlevel 2, and the
start scripts are in in /etc/rc2.d, a list of symbolic links.
Observe:

.$ ls -la /etc/rc2.d/ | grep net
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    25 2008-05-27 14:52 S26network-manager ->
../init.d/network-manager

Note, there is no link to "networking".  Of course, my NetworkManager
package is different from yours.

The only runlevel that does seem to activate networking is the sudo runlevel:

/etc/rcS.d/S40networking

Maybe it gets called implicitly by some other service, I don't know.


Anyway, lets suppose we install the kernel module backports and the
connection still fails.  Lets try to find out why.

In the forum thread on how to run NetworkManager 0.7, there's a
comment about bug shooting.  Apparently, you can run NetworkManager
and see its errors like so:

$ sudo NetworkManager --no-daemon

Even without updating NetworkManger, I'd try this.  I'd install the
kernel module backports. (I'm sure that is needed to get connections
with some routers).  Then restart, then try to see if the card is
working at all with

$ /sbin/iwlist scan

Then I'd try to manually turn off networking and NetworkManager, then
I'd do the manual restart

$ sudo NetworkManager --no-daemon

and

$ nm-applet

and in another terminal I'd be running

$ dmesg

over and over and maybe in another I'd run

$ tail -f /var/log/messages

because sometimes the 2 sets of messages diverge.

Oh, well.

I'm looking really hard for information on Ubuntu and Upstart, in particular

"how do I know which services are currently running?"
"where do you keep a list of all available services?"
"why don't all available services show up under the menu System/Admin/services"
"is it true that service 'networking' should not be running if we are
counting on NetworkManager?"
"Why did Hardy Herron put the NetworkManager script in
/etc/dbus-1/event.d, rather than /etc/init.d?"
pj

-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas