First, the change to nvidia drivers have completely eliminated the
screen lock-ups that required a reboot to get free and ALL of the log
errors from the video drivers are gone.
I've had time to work with Network Manager and Wicd over the weekend,
purging both, reinstalling one at a time and trying to get either of
them working like they should. That effort was a complete waste of
time. I have only two interfaces on this computer. The Intel wired
network card, which is recognized by the system and both network apps
and connects reliably 100 percent of the time. The other is a Netgear
WNDA4100 with an rt3573 chip supported by the rt2800usb series drivers.
The system recognizes this interface, it's in the config files and I can
activate it manually with no problems. This USB wifi works. However,
Wicd will connect with this interface but it won't show up in the list
of wifi networks. Actually, none of the wifi networks that I used to be
able to see in the panel show up in the list at all anymore. Wicd
connects, I can see the connection stats but it's not listed anywhere.
If wifi disconnects the wired interface takes over and the wifi will
re-connect when the interface or signal comes back.
Network Manager, on the other hand, will only connect to the wired
interface and show up in it's list. Even though the system logs show
the Netgear WNDA4100 ready, NM says it's unavailable and unconfigurable.
I've tried different config options and found some older posts on this
problem with no resolution. Thing is, I can manually activate the
interface and have it work properly while NM is active. Again, no other
wifi networks show up in the list for obvious reason - no connection.
I like either of these network management apps that made it easy to
switch between wired or wireless or switch the connections ON or OFF
depending on conditions but I haven't had this hard a time configuring
my networking the way I like it since win95, which is why I switched in
the first place.
The log error below appears to be concurrent with using the nm-applet
from the Mate panel. Don't know if this means anything;
[251078.547488] mate-panel[4605]: segfault at 4 ip 00007f3bc22d25f0 sp
00007ffe86380758 error 4 in libgtk-3.so.0.2200.11[7f3bc20c7000+700000]
The interfaces work but there appears to be some lack of information
transfer between the interfacing and the network management apps Wicd
and NM . Maybe it's the Mate panel or maybe the apps themselves, I
can't tell and I don't know what else to look for. ifconfig and
iwconfig both show normal interface operation, configuration and
connections.
Suggestions?
Tony