Hi,

 

 I just bought a T400 last month and installed Ubuntu Linux 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) last week. The kernel version is 2.6.27 (right now it is 2.6.27-11.27). Most parts works wonderfully for me, yet I keep getting problems with the wireless card. Last week and this week I got the computer crashing on me when I was doing wireless-related stuff (mainly to bring up the wireless interface).

 

First problem (Feb 5, 2009)

 

 

I was waking the computer up from sleep (suspend) and trying to disable/enable wireless, etc.
Don't remember what I did; perhaps Fn+F5 and other keys as well. The computer suddenly hung by itself, and caps lock light blinking. I had to turn off the computer by holding the power switch.

After start, the wireless behaving strangely:
* before "ifconfig wlan0 up", the wireless light is off
* after "ifconfig wlan0 up", the wireless light is on
* after "ifconfig wlan0 down", the wireless light is off -- never like this before! Wireless light is usually always on all the time unless we press the Fn+F5 key.
* connection to my wireless ESSID network is not working.
* But in Vista the wireless connection is fine!
* reboot with Linux doesn't help.

I thought I was doomed for the wireless in linux. But when I used the hardware switch to turn off the wireless and turned it on again, the wireless suddenty worked again! But the wireless light behavior (turning off when I brought down the network interface) persists.

 

 

The second error (Feb 9, 2009)

 

I brought the computer up from sleep (suspend). The wireless switch was off at this point. With hardware wireless switch turned OFF (my mistake!), I tried to turn on the wireless interface (wlan0) using `ifup' program. When I did that, I encountered the following error:

Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A):
   SET filed on device wlan0 ; Resource temporarily unavailable.

...(DHCP program's message)

wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801.

...(trying to get IP address, which is futile)

Before this returns to shell, I turned on the wireless switch then ^C the ifup program. This is fine, I thought.

 

Then I ifdown the wlan0 and tried to ifup it again. Guess what happened? The computer hung again, the caps lock blinked. And the computer became useless until I force it to shutdown by holding the power switch.

The error message in /var/log/kern.log is not that helpful; there is nothing  out of the ordinary:

   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.265262] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.265569] iwlagn: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill switch
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.308027] iwlagn: WARNING: Requesting MAC access during RFKILL wakes up NIC
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.312008] iwlagn: MAC is in deep sleep!
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.359349] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.372565] iwlagn: WARNING: Requesting MAC access during RFKILL wakes up NIC
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.417280] wlan0: Failed to config new SSID to the low-level driver
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.376539] iwlagn: MAC is in deep sleep!
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.421577] wlan0: Failed to config new SSID to the low-level driver
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.421579] wlan0: Failed to config new BSSID to the low-level driver
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.421829] wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:14:6c:17:a2:98
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.620149] wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:14:6c:17:a2:98
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.651642] NET: Registered protocol family 17
   Feb  9 10:00:56 wirawan1 kernel: [55618.820553] wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:14:6c:17:a2:98
   Feb  9 10:00:57 wirawan1 kernel: [55619.020136] wlan0: authentication with AP 00:14:6c:17:a2:98 timed out

 

Can somebody help me with this? Let me know if you want more technical information.

 

Since the first error I have booted back to WinVista and use the PC Doctor to see if there is something wrong with the card. But all tests returned fine. This is bizzare.

Hi. I have exactly the same problem. I'm running Linux Mint 6 (64 bit) on my T400, which is a distribution based on Ubuntu 8.10. Everything works great apart from the system occationally freezing and caps lock light blinking.  Has only happened while I have been connected to wireless networks, so the problem may be wireless related, but I'm not sure. Just like you, I have found no traces of the error in logs.

Thanks for posting your problem. So it is not an isolated issue with my laptop only. Let me ask a few questions:

 

* How often does your laptop crash? Like: roughly every week, or very rarely?

* What is the wireless card that you have? If you don't know, please type "lspci" from command prompt and post it here.

* What is your wireless network configuration? Do you use WEP, WPA, or WPA2?

 

While I still don't know what the problem is, this may help narrow down the occassion (and thus, the cause) of the problem.

 

Wirawan

I forgot one thing. I also post the similar problem here:

 

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6876821

 

Still no solution yet...crossing my fingers.

My wireless card is "Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100". My laptop has crashed twice since February 20. I think the problem is related to the default kernel version in Ubuntu 8.10 in combination with the Intel wireless card. See this discussion:

 

 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=968792