T400 with Intel 5100 : wireless-r​elated crashes on Linux

Question

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.

Answer 1

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