No WiFi on Thinkpad T410

[GreyGeek]

Ah, nice solution!
I purchased a Linksys E2500 router a few years ago. A couple months after I bought it I got a popup from Cisco stating that a firmware update required that I create an account in their new cloud server. I declined and did some research. It was reported by researchers that the new update had a back door in it and others said it was forced on Cicso by the NSA. Regardless, I downloaded the DD-WRT firmware for my router and burned it. Couldn't be happier. Access to all the features of the router, which Cisco's GUI didn't offer, were made available in the DD-WRT GUI. Since my router is less than three feet from my laptop I turned the Tx power down significantly so that it just reaches the bedroom 30 feet away. Too much Tx power is the primary reason for wifi hardware failures.

[makelix]

I had been wanting to try out DD-WRT, so I dug out an old Linksys, flashed it and configured it as an access point. Then I replaced the old access point that was showing WEP encryption with the DD-WRT/Linksys one. I also changed the cipher setting on my main router from TKIP and AES to just AES. So the access point isn't actually fixed but replaced at the moment, I guess that I wrote inaccurately before, sorry about that. Below is my current WiFi list as shown by nmcli:

SSID                 BSSID              MODE   CHAN  FREQ      RATE       SIGNAL  BARS  SECURITY   ACTIVE  * 
kanaverkko           AC:F1:DF:51:24:CC  Infra  1     2412 MHz  54 Mbit/s  95      ▂▄▆█  WPA2       yes     * 
kanaverkko           00:14:BF:92:F8:1F  Infra  6     2437 MHz  54 Mbit/s  67      ▂▄▆_  WPA2       no        
Ossi                 00:71:C2:3E:1A:63  Infra  6     2437 MHz  54 Mbit/s  47      ▂▄__  WPA1 WPA2  no        
Ossi                 00:71:C2:39:5D:F6  Infra  48    5240 MHz  54 Mbit/s  24      ▂___  WPA1 WPA2  no        
0679b0               00:71:C2:3B:40:4C  Infra  6     2437 MHz  54 Mbit/s  20      ▂___  WPA1 WPA2  no        
mokkula_593190_2.4G  8C:34:FD:6C:03:EE  Infra  1     2412 MHz  54 Mbit/s  19      ▂___  WPA2       no

[GreyGeek]

I don't know if this the result of recent updates or the fact that I fixed my second access point, but the WiFi has worked like a charm for a couple of days now.

How did you fix it?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[makelix]

I don't know if this the result of recent updates or the fact that I fixed my second access point, but the WiFi has worked like a charm for a couple of days now.

[GreyGeek]

A single column of pixels on the left side of the screen is indicative of a failure of the display's horizontal oscillator. Could be driver or hardware


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[makelix]

After disconnecting your wifi from the system tray, did you do a reload first and then a restart of the NetworkManager.service?

Yep, didn't seem to make any difference (when compared to just disconnecting and then restarting NetworkManager) as far as I can tell. Even the total system crash after a couple of times was the same :-) Or actually, previously when the computer crashed, it was stuck on a totally black screen except the extreme left side which had like a single column of flickering pixels. This time the computer automatically shut down after showing the black screen with the flickering pixels for a short time. So I guess that's some kind of progress. All in all, I'd say that the newer NetworkManagers don't like to be restarted.

[GreyGeek]

After disconnecting your wifi from the system tray, did you do a reload first and then a restart of the NetworkManager.service?

[makelix]

Here's mine -

options iwlwifi led_mode=1 power_save=0 11n_disable=8 swcrypto=1

One possible solution I've DDG'd is that the registered domain for the wifi is defaulted to "00".
I checked it with sudo iw reg get and it was "00". (Two zeros)
So, I checked my reg published domain code and found it to be "US".
I set it temporarily with
sudo iw reg set US
To permanently set it I edited crda
kdesudo kate /etc/default/crda
and set REGDOMAIN=US and then saved it.

Thank you for your suggestions. I tried both of them but they didn't seem to make a difference. Restarting NetworkManager used to work somewhat reliably for me, but that has also gone downhill. Like I wrote somewhere before, my record is like 30 minutes of disconnecting, restarting and so on to no avail. So lately I've just been dragging an Ethernet cable around the house... I also found out that if I power up my laptop without the Ethernet cable and the WiFi fails to start properly, I get the text-based login prompt instead of the usual KDE one. When that happens, pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7 gets me to the KDE login screen.

Possibly not helpful but I haven't used network manager in years, preferring wicd because my wireless needs are fairly simple.

That might be interesting to try, although in Fedora my WiFi worked fine and Fedora uses NetworkManager as far as I know/remember.

[wizard10000]

Possibly not helpful but I haven't used network manager in years, preferring wicd because my wireless needs are fairly simple. If you do choose to install wicd-kde you'll need to purge *all* network manager packages or neither NM nor wicd will work

[GreyGeek]

I noticed that about 30 minutes or so after booting up my wifi began its disconnect-reconnect loop, with most of the time spent "configuring" the wifi. I clicked the "Disconnect" button to stop the looping. Then I open systemd-gui in SystemSettings and right mouse on "NetworkManager.service". From the popup I click on "Reload". After that my wifi connection is stable usually for the rest of the day. However, random events that cannot consistently reproduce the problem often trigger the looping. For example, opening the KMail settings dialog can trigger looping *sometimes*. Same with opening the systemd-gui, *sometimes*. Ditto with FireFox and "about:config". These events are never consistently repeatable.

Disconnecting the wifi and then reloading NetworkManager.service is just a workaround.

One possible solution I've DDG'd is that the registered domain for the wifi is defaulted to "00".
I checked it with sudo iw reg get and it was "00". (Two zeros)
So, I checked my reg published domain code and found it to be "US".
I set it temporarily with
sudo iw reg set US
To permanently set it I edited crda
kdesudo kate /etc/default/crda
and set REGDOMAIN=US and then saved it.

Now I'll wait to see if that fixed it.

[wizard10000]

I got the WiFi to connect by adding the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf:

options iwlwifi power_save=0

Here's mine -

options iwlwifi led_mode=1 power_save=0 11n_disable=8 swcrypto=1

[makelix]

This thread has been quiet for a week, so I was wondering if there might be other venues where I could go on about this? Like maybe Ubuntu Forums -> Ubuntu Official Flavors Support -> Networking & Wireless?

[makelix]

Your last run of wireless-info showed a connection (and Bluetooth was on):

That's the thing: I can get the configuration by DHCP, but that's the only thing that works. I might get one to eight pings thru, then nothing. Network manager applet thinks I'm connected, I guess it's because the configuration look ok to it.

It would be interesting to run wifi-info again and see what has changed.

The WiFi suddenly worked when I started the laptop, so I got a wifi-info dump from that. Afterwards, I did a suspend-resume cycle, after which the WiFi failed. So I have have a wifi-info dump of that too.

Some commentary: this time I had the Ethernet disconnected while running the script. Bluetooth is now disabled from the BIOS. Also, I changed the /etc/nsswitch.conf to fix the issue where hosts on the local network (like HOSTNAME.local) couldn't be reached (the commented line is the original line) even when connected via Ethernet:

#hosts:          files resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns
hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] dns

And then there is the issue of my second access point, which seems to have gone from WPA2 to WPA1 for some reason. Haven't had the time or motivation to dig into it yet.

It also showed that you didn't have any DNS. You can add Google's DNS servers to your network settings. They are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

If you mean the empty resolv.conf, I'm in the understanding that it's not really in use anymore. In the section NetworkManager info you can see the line "IP4.DNS[1]: 192.168.1.1", which shows that the WiFi router is acting as the DNS.wireless-info-fail.zipwireless-info-ok.zip

[GreyGeek]

It would have done something if you had KDE components missing or damaged.

Your last run of wireless-info showed a connection (and Bluetooth was on):

##### ifconfig ##########################

enp0s25: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet [COLOR=#ff0000]192.168.1.105[/COLOR]  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        inet6 fe80::75d5:4343:8dda:9c43  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether <MAC address>  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 21  bytes 2490 (2.4 KB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 71  bytes 9454 (9.4 KB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 20  memory 0xf2600000-f2620000  

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 702  bytes 52618 (52.6 KB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 702  bytes 52618 (52.6 KB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

wlp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet [COLOR=#ff0000]192.168.1.104[/COLOR]  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        inet6 fe80::5a94:6bff:fe47:b5c8  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether <MAC address>  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 296  bytes 43895 (43.8 KB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 1268  bytes 192790 (192.7 KB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

##### iwconfig ##########################

enp0s25   no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlp3s0    IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"kanaverkko"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: <MAC 'kanaverkko' [AC1]>   
          [COLOR=#ff0000]Bit Rate=1 Mb/s  [/COLOR] Tx-Power=15 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-33 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:55   Missed beacon:0

##### route #############################

Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
0.0.0.0         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    100    0        0 enp0s25
0.0.0.0         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    600    0        0 wlp3s0
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U     1000   0        0 wlp3s0
192.168.1.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     100    0        0 enp0s25
192.168.1.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     600    0        0 wlp3s0

##### resolv.conf #######################

nameserver 127.0.1.1

##### network managers ##################

It also showed that you didn't have any DNS. You can add Google's DNS servers to your network settings. They are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

It would be interesting to run wifi-info again and see what has changed.

[makelix]

Was that command supposed to do something? It was like a two-second operation. I did a restart after that, no WiFi yet.

I also did a fresh install of Fedora 25 Beta KDE Spin on yet another drive earlier today just to test that it is actually possible to get the WiFi working on this computer on newer versions of kernel and KDE. It worked, kernel version was 4.8.1-1.fc25-x86_64 and KDE Plasma was at 5.8.1.