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FreedomBen / rtl8188ce-linux-driver

This modified version of the RealTek WiFi driver fixes some issues with RealTek cards on Linux.
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Working, but with power-drops with RTL8723AE+Ubuntu 3.10 #6

Open VincentSC opened 10 years ago

VincentSC commented 10 years ago

Thank you for this driver. It seems to be working better than the original, but the sudden power-drops are still there (and with that an unstable connection).

How could I investigate and help? Such knowledge is not much available on the internet, while it is so important.

FreedomBen commented 10 years ago

Yeah I've been seeing the sudden power-drops lately also. When I get some time I'll start troubleshooting. Right now I don't know what direction to go but hopefully soon. I'll keep you posted.

VincentSC commented 10 years ago

Ok, thanks! If you could point me to tutorials how I can make my hands dirty, you have a helping hand here. For me the learning curve for driver-fixing is a bit too steep.

GeneStark commented 10 years ago

Thanks also. I just tried it with an RTL8188ee on Ubuntu 13.10. From very limited testing, the peak rates seem higher with your driver, but the main problem is extreme sensitivity/instability to signal strength. I observed rates of 15Mb/sec and then I move my laptop two feet and rates suddenly drop to zero, followed after several seconds by a disconnect. Often the SSID drops from the systray icon menu. Turning off WiFi from that menu and then turning it back on again often resets the situation. The symptoms are qualitatively similar to what I get with the stock 13.10 driver. I have not yet looked at the code or your changes. I have kernel programming experience, and can offer to provide info, but it's a matter of time for me. I was dismayed in my first look at the stock driver code to see a complete lack of comments. FWIW I also tried a TrendNet USB dongle I have that identifies as an RTL8187B and it seemed to have similar issues. So the problem might be in the common code, rather than the chipset-specific parts.

paydelott commented 10 years ago

I'm quite happy that some highly skilled people with interests in this area are looking at the extreme sensitivity of this driver. It drives me crazy. Now I'm trying to figure out why the latest kernel I can run with 13.10 is 3.8.0-33. Black,unresponsive screen after login when running wireless.

On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 7:55 AM, GeneStark notifications@github.com wrote:

Thanks also. I just tried it with an RTL8188ee on Ubuntu 13.10. From very limited testing, the peak rates seem higher with your driver, but the main problem is extreme sensitivity/instability to signal strength. I observed rates of 15Mb/sec and then I move my laptop two feet and rates suddenly drop to zero, followed after several seconds by a disconnect. Often the SSID drops from the systray icon menu. Turning off WiFi from that menu and then turning it back on again often resets the situation. The symptoms are qualitatively similar to what I get with the stock 13.10 driver. I have not yet looked at the code or your changes. I have kernel programming experience, and can offer to provide info, but it's a matter of time for me. I was dismayed in my first look at the stock driver code to see a complete lack of comments. FWIW I also tried a TrendNet USB dongle I have that identifies as an RTL8187B and it seemed to have similar issues. So the problem might be in the common code, rather than the chipset-specific parts.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver/issues/6#issuecomment-33317293 .

FreedomBen commented 10 years ago

Right now I'm working on upgrading all of the debug code for kernels >=3.10 so we can get some debug info out of it. After that's done it should be much easier to see what is causing the instability and power drops.

@GeneStark thanks for the info. That will help in tracking it down

paydelott commented 10 years ago

Good. When I upgraded to Ubuntu 13.10 on my Toshiba L75D-A7280, I could not load any 3.10 kernel. Everything seemed to just power down. I have since retreated to 13.04 and 3.08.35. But, I know there will be upgrades and updates.

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 11:02 PM, FreedomBen notifications@github.comwrote:

Right now I'm working on upgrading all of the debug code for kernels

=3.10 so we can get some debug info out of it. After that's done it should be much easier to see what is causing the instability and power drops.

@GeneStark https://github.com/GeneStark thanks for the info. That will help in tracking it down

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver/issues/6#issuecomment-33863859 .

FreedomBen commented 10 years ago

There are a few interesting commits that hit the bleeding edge kernel 3.14 that might help with some of these problems. Unfortunately that code base is different enough that a straight cherry pick won't do it, but I'm going to start looking at what they fixed and trying to incorporate it into this driver. Based on my research it looks like this is a very complicated issue.

GeneStark commented 10 years ago

OK, I am happy to try anything you might come up with. Let me know if you commit something, and I will pull it down and load it up. I currently get a crude idea of what is going on with "wavemon", but I can also report kernel debug log messages if that would help you.

                    - Gene

On 03/01/2014 12:57 PM, FreedomBen wrote:

There are a few interesting commits that hit the bleeding edge kernel 3.14 that might help with some of these problems. Unfortunately that code base is different enough that a straight cherry pick won't do it, but I'm going to start looking at what they fixed and trying to incorporate it into this driver. Based on my research it looks like this is a very complicated issue.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver/issues/6#issuecomment-36431386.

GeneStark commented 10 years ago

Ben, When the 3.11.0-22 update hit, it reverted my wifi drivers back to stock. My problem is, I pulled recent commits down and then tried to rebuild using the current Ubuntu 13.10 branch, but for some reason I am not getting the same behavior as before. In particular, the Xmit power is only showing 20dbm instead of 33dbm like it was before, and the disconnect problem exists.

I tried checking out commits back to January, and I even booted the old 3.11.0-20 kernel and rebuilt what seemed to be the earliest commit that would work for 3.11 kernels, but I still have the same problem.

I hate to ask "is it plugged in" questions, but do you have any idea as to what might have gone wrong? If you do, thanks.

                    - Gene Stark

On 03/01/2014 12:57 PM, FreedomBen wrote:

There are a few interesting commits that hit the bleeding edge kernel 3.14 that might help with some of these problems. Unfortunately that code base is different enough that a straight cherry pick won't do it, but I'm going to start looking at what they fixed and trying to incorporate it into this driver. Based on my research it looks like this is a very complicated issue.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver/issues/6#issuecomment-36431386.

FreedomBen commented 10 years ago

@GeneStark Did your CRDA settings get reset? I've noticed that happens sometimes when Ubuntu kernel updates get installed. Try setting your CRDA regulatory domain to Bolivia and then set the Tx power to 33 and see if it works:

sudo iw reg set BO sudo iwconfig <if-name> txpower 33

Let me know if it still doesn't work after that, and don't worry about asking "is it plugged in" questions. With this stuff there's no such thing :-)

GeneStark commented 10 years ago

Ben, sorry to bother you again, but I just upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu 14.04 and after checking out the 14.04 branch of your driver, building and installing, I got a panic on reboot. I had to reinstall the linux-image-extra module to overwrite the bad binaries.

Any ideas? The laptop is a 64-bit CPU.

                            - Gene Stark

On 05/28/2014 10:38 AM, FreedomBen wrote:

@GeneStark https://github.com/GeneStark Did your CRDA settings get reset? I've noticed that happens sometimes when Ubuntu kernel updates get installed. Try setting your CRDA regulatory domain to Bolivia and then set the Tx power to 33 and see if it works:

|sudo iw reg set BO| |sudo iwconfig txpower 33|

Let me know if it still doesn't work after that, and don't worry about asking "is it plugged in" questions. With this stuff there's no such thing :-)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver/issues/6#issuecomment-44414850.

FreedomBen commented 10 years ago

Gene,

Sorry I just saw your comment about the kernel panic. There was an issue with a kernel panic that I thought was fixed by a58d474. There were also some changes brought down from the 3.14.4 kernel that might be triggering something weird. You could try installing the ubuntu-14.04-legacy

You may try installing the ubuntu-14.04-legacy branch and see if that works better. That branch was created right before pulling down the changes from 3.14.4, so it may be what you were using previously.

My laptop motherboard just died so I don't have any hardware to test on right now, but hopefully we can get this figured out.

Ben