Problems with wlan and bluetooth

Hi,

since my new installation of netrunner 20.01 i have the problem of very instable wlan and bluetooth connections.
The wlan-connection is asking me every 5 minutes or so for the password. And the the bluetooth-connection is very instable as well. For example: when I have an audio-connection all seems to be fine for some minutes and then the connection is going to be choppy or so …

In the notebook is

lspci -nnk | grep -i net -A2

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter [10ec:8176] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter [10ec:8195]
Kernel driver in use: rtl8192ce

(with win7 every is fine)

Thx in advance!
Dieter

This is a problematic chip that is known to have issues with the linux driver.
What you could try to do is activating backports and installing the newer kernel in backports.
Also try to add this option to the driver and reboot to see if it helps:

echo "options rtl8192ce swenc=1 ips=0" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8192ce.conf

Thank you for the answer.
With backports do you mean the buster-backports ???

Ciao!

Dieter

Exactly. The Debian Buster Backports.

Thx again!

Sorry if i’m asking again, but i’m not familiar with this kernel-stuff. Which packages do you recommend for me? In the momennt it is working the kernel 4.19.0-12amd

Ciao!

Dieter

After activating the debian buster backports repo please update your package list with
sudo apt update

You can install the packages.
linux-image-5.8.0-0.bpo.2-amd64
&
linux-headers-5.8.0-0.bpo.2-amd64

For Kernel 5.8.10

The terminal command
sudo apt install linux-image-5.8.0-0.bpo.2-amd64 linux-headers-5.8.0-0.bpo.2-amd64
should suffice.
After that please reboot.

Note: If you have virtualbox installed make sure to update it from backports otherwise the dkms virtualbox package might display an error and virtualbox will not be usable with the newer kernel.
You can use sudo apt install virtualbox-dkms with backports activated to update it.

Thank you, with this kernel the wlan is stable. But the bluetooth is still unstable as hell.
Is there any way to make the bluetooth connection stable.

Ciao!

Dieter

Can you try with activated backports to upgrade the
firmware-linux-nonfree
firmware-linux-free
packages. I hope that makes it work more stable after a reboot.

It’s already the newest version …

So you have this version already? https://packages.debian.org/buster-backports/firmware-linux-nonfree
Otherwise try to force the version upgrade with

sudo apt install firmware-linux-nonfree/buster-backports firmware-linux-free/buster-backports

thank you for the answer,

The backports are actived, nevertheless i get this answer:

sudo apt install firmware-linux-nonfree/buster-backports firmware-linux-free/buster-backports

Paketlisten werden gelesen… Fertig
Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut.
Statusinformationen werden eingelesen… Fertig
E: Veröffentlichung »buster-backports« für »firmware-linux-nonfree« konnte nicht gefunden werden.
E: Veröffentlichung »buster-backports« für »firmware-linux-free« konnte nicht gefunden werden.

And now?

Ciao!

Dieter

Make sure to have the complete backports buster line activated:
So the source file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-backports.list should look like this

deb https://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-backports main contrib non-free

We don’t ship with contrib and non-free by default so that needs to be added manually for now (I merged it in master so the next ISOs should come with it added by default)

After checking this please refresh your packages list with
sudo apt update
and try installing again
sudo apt install firmware-linux-nonfree/buster-backports firmware-linux-free/buster-backports

Hope that works now and you can test if it fixes the issue for you.

Thanks again.

my debian-backports-list looks now like this

# deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-backports main  
# manuell eingefügt 27.11.2020
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-backports main contrib non-free

and then i have done
sudo apt update

and then i tried

sudo apt install firmware-linux-nonfree/buster-backports firmware-linux-free/buster-backports

but, sorry, the result is still:

sudo apt install firmware-linux-nonfree/buster-backports firmware-linux-free/buster-backports
Paketlisten werden gelesen... Fertig
Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut.       
Statusinformationen werden eingelesen.... Fertig
E: Veröffentlichung »buster-backports« für »firmware-linux-free« konnte nicht gefunden werden

Shit!

And now? Any ideas?

Dieter

Leave the firmware-linux-free package then. I thought it also was updated in backports but that is not the case. So only update the nonfree firmware package.

Ok, thank you. I can get no improvement, so I think I have to live with the bad performance. Or do you think there is another way to solve this problem?
Over a distance of 2 meters there is no continous audio-signal possible. At a distance of 50cm the audio connection is stable. I checked the connection to the bluetooth-reciever with another notebook over the distance - no problem.

Ciao!

Dieter

Ciao!

Dieter

That is weird indeed. Sadly the bluetooth chip and driver is proprietary. So as long as it does not work on any other distro better I don’t know what to do to improve this situation.