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`I am switched from windows to dual boot with ubuntu 6 months ago. And its network card was working fine. One of my colleague having same model who had just installed ubuntu told me that there is some issue with its wireless driver , as I remember it was some dis-connectivity happening but that wasn't a major issue. He told me 2 commands, which I don't remember, I executed around a month ago. And from then I am facing connectivity problem. At home, I have to use cable instead of wifi and at office I have to use TP-link USB stick by one of my colleague. Otherwise for a week, don't know due to some ubuntu release or some other reason, I am unable to connect and use my internet through wifi. I can have a TP-link USB that just work fine, but my questions is:

That how can I check that why all that happened? If it was working before, then their should be its solution with any external hardware by installing some driver or configurations, so what is that solution? Is there some command I need to execute to get further information and post here?

thanks in advance guys

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1 Answer 1

  1. I hope that you're not using the command line often. If so, you can try executing the "history" command and find those 2 commands your friend executed.

You may also find modified files this way (taken from http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-osxfind-files-by-date/):

touch --date "2013-01-01" /tmp/start
touch --date "2013-03-01" /tmp/end
find /etc -type f -newer /tmp/start -not -newer /tmp/end

But this is very trickly since you don't know what you're searching for...

He probably (un)installed something or changed some configuration file.

In both cases, your system may be "returned back" to a standard state by reinstalling the network related packages, for example:

sudo apt-get install aptitude
sudo aptitude reinstall <something>

, where may be the package (containing modified configuration) your friend touched. Or "everything" if necessary. During the reinstallation, the package installer should ask you whether you want returning the default configuration back or not...

I also had problems with Wifi on my old Lenovo laptop, but newer Ubuntu version solved it for me automatically. The previous solution was uninstalling the network-manager and installing the "wicd" instead. This is no longer necessary and not recommended as well.

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I use command line very often, as i am a web developer, so is there way to check networks resources and correct them where there is something wrong? as I don't think that I am able to get those commands out of many I execute every day, while installing some of my tools and package used in my work –  Hafiz Mar 16 '13 at 22:16
Seems like these commands are : sudo modprobe -rfv ath9k and sudo modprobe -v ath9k, is this information relevant? –  Hafiz Mar 16 '13 at 22:28
It means that the "ath9k" driver was removed and installed again which equals to simple driver "restart". This is no solution and suggests that there is a problem within the driver itself. Unfortunately, it seems that there are some bugs reported regarding this driver and Wifi connection instability: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/971809 bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/945379 –  Rostislav Stribrny Mar 16 '13 at 23:12
so what should I do? Is there some alternative driver that can fix this issue? –  Hafiz Mar 16 '13 at 23:33

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