What to do about wireless issues?

[Chuck Anderson]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 10:09:19AM -0500, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> What is the proper method for dealing with wireless issues? Wirless is
> pretty popular now, and I find myself having issues with the wireless
> stack even when I specifically choose the hardware to be compatible.
> Due to the number of pieces in place, I can hardly file a proper bug
> report due to my own ignorance on the matter. Is their a single medium
> where users can reach people knowledgeable enough at least give me (or
> other users) enough information to determine which component is
> malfunctioning?
> 
> For example, I have two examples currently with me where wifi worked
> once, then never well again (so far) with no obvious logged errors.
> (not giving details as I am not looking to use this list to
> troubleshoot what is possible an end user problem)
> 
> Or do I just keep thing to the general list and hope for a response?
> 
> Arthur Pemberton


In general, I would use these steps:

Edit this file:

/usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant.service

by adding " -ddd" after /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant so it looks something 
like this:

Exec=/usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -ddd -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -u -f /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log

Then reboot.  This will add lots of debugging information to the log 
file (which may grow fairly large).

Then when you have a problem connecting to a wireless network, open a 
bug against NetworkManager and attach these files to the bug:

/var/log/messages
/var/log/wpa_supplicant.log

NOTE: /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log might be zero bytes in length.  If 
that happens, find the latest logrotated copy of the file and attach 
that one instead:

ls -ltr /var/log/wpa_supplicant*

e.g. /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log-20080722

Also, paste the output of these into the bug:

nm-tool

dmesg

(the latter can be helpful to see kernel messages from your wireless 
driver)

Also, note what you see in the nm-applet drop-down list, whether there 
is a security icon or a computer icon, etc.