Removing WiFi dongle drivers

Question

I used to use a Edimax WiFi dongle, and it worked fine.

I then inserted a Edup dongle and this made my PC completely freeze. Only restarting it helped.

Now when I plug in the original Edimax dongle, the PC freezes again.

My thought is that the Edup driver is faulty, and now the Edimax dongle is trying to use that driver.

Is there a way to remove all USB WiFi dongle drivers so that I can start fresh with the Edimax driver?

Output to dkms status is:

bbswitch, 0.7, 4.4.0-31-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 4.4.0-47-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 4.4.0-51-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 4.4.0-57-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 4.4.0-59-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 4.4.0-62-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 4.4.0-66-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-375, 375.39, 4.4.0-66-generic, x86_64: installed

Output to sudo lshw -C network is:

  *-network               
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: 82574L Gigabit Network Connection
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: eth1
       version: 00
       serial: 68:05:ca:41:35:94
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=e1000e driverversion=3.2.6-k firmware=1.8-0 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair
       resources: irq:19 memory:f73c0000-f73dffff memory:f7300000-f737ffff ioport:d000(size=32) memory:f73e0000-f73e3fff memory:f7380000-f73bffff
  *-network
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:07:00.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 15
       serial: 34:97:f6:8d:3c:b4
       size: 1Gbit/s
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl8168h-2_0.0.2 02/26/15 ip=68.181.161.98 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=1Gbit/s
       resources: irq:134 ioport:c000(size=256) memory:f7104000-f7104fff memory:f7100000-f7103fff

Please edit your question (not in comments please) to include the `terminal` output of `dkms status`, `lsusb`, and `sudo lshw -C network`. Did you install any software for the Edup dongle? Start new comments directed to me with `@heynnema` or I may miss them. — heynnema, Mar 31 '17 at 20:47
@heynnema, see my updated question. I did not install any software for either of the dongles. — Mike, Apr 01 '17 at 15:50
I don't see an optional driver installed for either dongle, so it must use a standard driver. Without either dongle inserted, I can't tell what driver it's attempting to use. Try opening a `terminal` window and type `tail -f /var/log/syslog`, then insert a dongle, and watch the terminal output to see what syslog indicates, before it freezes. — heynnema, Apr 01 '17 at 16:33
@heynnema, when I do that, there are many lines printed to the terminal and I am not sure exactly what is relevant. Is there a way to save the output to a file? I tried `tail -f /var/log/syslog > file.log`, but after I reset the PC after it freezes, file.log is empty. — Mike, Apr 03 '17 at 21:52
The only way then might be to `more /var/log/syslog` immediately after a reboot, and look around the exact time that you first inserted the dongle, and see if you can locate the entries. If you can, then copy them to the clipboard, edit your original question, and paste them in. If you get close to the time of insertion, you can, for example, `grep "Apr 3 16:37" /var/log/syslog` and then copy/paste those. — heynnema, Apr 03 '17 at 23:38
@heynnema, I tried your suggestion, but I cannot correlate the time I inserted the dongle to the time in the log file. I inserted the dongle at exactly 17:13:00 (at which time the PC freezed) but the entries in the log file jump from 16:17 to 17:13:55, so I am not sure if the event was captured. [Here](https://transfer.sh/bB25f/syslog) is the entire syslog file (it is too many charachters to post here) — Mike, Apr 04 '17 at 00:34
Please see my partial answer, and suggested next troubleshooting step, below... — heynnema, Apr 04 '17 at 04:39
@heynnema, thank you for all your time and effort with this. I am quite bust at the moment, and will check back in once I have some time to work on this again. — Mike, Apr 04 '17 at 14:55

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Partial answer... work in progress...

I reviewed your syslog. It actually looks pretty good. You're correct, none of the entries that we were looking for had gotten sync'd out to the syslog file after the crash.

I did notice a couple of minor problems, unrelated to your Edimax problem, that should be fixed. See further below...

What I want to do next, to troubleshoot your Edimax issue, is to have you boot to the Ubuntu Live DVD in "Try Ubuntu" mode, and then insert one of your dongles, and see if it crashes the Live system.

Other problems...

1) Do you still have vmware installed? I see the following errors...

Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: Msg_SetLocaleEx: HostLocale=UTF-8 UserLocale=NULL
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: DictionaryLoad: Cannot open file "/usr/lib/vmware/settings": No such file or directory.
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: PREF Optional preferences file not found at /usr/lib/vmware/settings. Using default values.
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: Could not expand environment variable HOME.
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: DictionaryLoad: Cannot open file "~/.vmware/config": No such file or directory.
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: PREF Optional preferences file not found at ~/.vmware/config. Using default values.
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: Could not expand environment variable HOME.
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: PREF Unable to check permissions for preferences file.
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: DictionaryLoad: Cannot open file "~/.vmware/preferences": No such file or directory.
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: PREF Failed to load user preferences.
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: Connect from remote socket (71.6.167.142:54919).
Apr  3 14:01:20 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: Connect from 71.6.167.142
Apr  3 14:01:21 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: recv() FAIL: 1.
Apr  3 14:01:21 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: VMAuthdSocketRead: read failed.  Closing socket for reading.
Apr  3 14:01:21 mkruger vmauthd[28878]: Read failed.

2) For this error... Apr 3 14:45:50 mkruger rsyslogd-2039: Could no open output pipe '/dev/xconsole': No such file or directory [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2039 ] you need to edit this file...

In terminal...

cd /etc/rsyslog.d/
gksudo gedit 50-default.conf

and change the end of the file so that it looks like this...

# NOTE: adjust the list below, or you'll go crazy if you have a reasonably
#      busy site..
#
#daemon.*;mail.*;\
#   news.err;\
#   *.=debug;*.=info;\
#   *.=notice;*.=warn   |/dev/xconsole

just place # in the front of each of the existing lines.

3) For this error... systemd-hostnamed[3075]: Warning: nss-myhostname is not installed. Changing the local hostname might make it unresolveable. Please install nss-myhostname!, you need to install...

In terminal...

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nss-myhostname

I reinstalled Unity desktop and it seemed to sort out the WiFi dongle issue. — Mike, May 03 '17 at 14:19
Did you reinstall the whole Ubuntu installation, or just some subset? — heynnema, May 03 '17 at 14:36
Just the desktop. just did: `sudo apt-get update`, `sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop`, `sudo apt-get install unity` — Mike, May 03 '17 at 22:26

Removing WiFi dongle drivers

1 Answers1

Partial answer... work in progress...