#1 2020-07-25 17:36:18

laanan

Member

Registered: 2020-01-25

Posts: 38

Wifi Inexplicably Stops Connecting [SOLVED]

Hi folks,

I lent my laptop to my kid for the week so that she could use it for an online camp (yay covid...), and now the wifi is not working. I asked her if she dropped the laptop, and she said no (and she would tell me if she would).

What's weird is that the wifi card is working well enough to see the networks. I tried just deleting the connections and adding them again, with no luck. I then checked the driver, which is up to date. Ethernet works fine.

Using nmcli to connect, I get the error:  "Error: Connection activation failed: (53) The Wi-Fi network could not be found." But, the network _is_ found, since it comes up when I use the list command, so what the heck?

Any recommendations on next troubleshooting steps (before I tear the laptop open, which on this model is a pain in the ***) would be awesome! THanks!

-- Matt

Last edited by laanan (2020-07-25 23:07:08)

rbh

Moderator

From: South of Lapplands inland

Registered: 2016-08-11

Posts: 1,921

Re: Wifi Inexplicably Stops Connecting [SOLVED]

Any recommendations on next troubleshooting steps (before I tear the laptop open, which on this model is a pain in the ***) would be awesome! THanks!

1. Does wifi works if you boot live dist?

if yes

2.  try turning off MAC address randomization:

Write inside /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf:

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

From https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse

Still do not work?
Read a little about wifi, start from above page.

---

// Regards rbh

Please read before requesting help: "Guide to getting help", "Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Lithium Desktop" and other help topics under "Help & Resources" on the BunsenLabs menu

laanan

Member

Registered: 2020-01-25

Posts: 38

Re: Wifi Inexplicably Stops Connecting [SOLVED]

rbh, thanks so much for the great link. I followed your suggestion about the mac address, with no change in behavior after restarting nmcli. It then dawned on me that my kid did let the laptop totally die (left it unplugged for like 8 hours), so even though it booted normally when I got it back, I wondered if a reboot would help (should have tried this first, but I did not think of it!). Reboot solved it! I have power manager set to hibernate on critical power, but perhaps I should change it to shut down to avoid problems due to power loss? Thanks again for the help. I didn't know about the iwconfig tool, which is actually a super cool tool!