Ralink RT5390 wifi issues on focal 20.04

[pemartins]

Apparently I've found a workaround, which is installing and using something called wicd. Been using it for some days now and did not lose connection ever since, which means that the problem is network-manager.

Is there a way to just install network-manager as it is in bionic 18.04?

[pemartins]

Buying additional hardware to correct a software bug in an operating system is not something I would consider, and specially not external hardware for a laptop which aims for portability.

Tell me something, since I did not have this issue in Bionic 18.04, would it be possible to just install Bionic's wifi driver (rt2800pci is it)?
If so, how could it be done?

[GreyGeek]

I have a Qualcomm Atheros AR9462 Wireless Network Adapter in my 2012 Acer Aspire V3-771G laptop.
It gave me an identical experience, apparently disconnecting but actually dropping the rx speed to a few hundred Kb which, for all practical purposes, is like having no connection at all in our GUI Internet. It uses the ath9k driver, which modinfo had revealed has several parms. I experimented with them in various combinations and arrived at a stable connection. Later releases, beginning with 16.04, automatically configured my wifi chip and it has worked perfectly every since, giving me about 85% of its maximum 256Mb/s speed.

Unfortunately, your chip driver has only one param, encryption (0,1).

I have nothing further to offer you. Sorry. Perhaps an inexpensive USB wifi chip might be a solution?

[pemartins]

It's always the same I've posted in the first post of this thread: https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post439855

I don't know if there are other logs that can be useful, if so please let me know.

[GreyGeek]

What do the log msgs say?

[pemartins]

Turns out the issue is not solved, even after all that stuff I did the connection still loses ip randomly. It happens mostly while streaming or downloading.

[GreyGeek]

...
As I am not exactly a computer genius (far, waaaaaayyyy far), I make use of tools like CherryTree to keep entries/logs of every single solution for every single problem I have found at some point in Linux. Even every app I install and remove is in there for each OS, in case I need to do it again or do a fresh install in a future version. So all I had to do was copy my "wifi fix 20.04" entry and paste it on the thread.....

Excellent practice!

I used to have a near photographic memory and never depended on written documents. I still think I do, but in reality I don't. That's why bookmarks and DDG have become my memory. Most of the advice I give on this forum I do DDG searches for. But, the problem I have is remembering that I bookmarked a solution.

[jlittle]

it means that for you Cloudfare's 1.1.1.1 is faster than google, right?

Yes, 4 times faster.

I was thinking maybe pt is to es like nz is to au, and the Google DNS might be in es.

[pemartins]

Passing the info was the least I could do. Specially because I realized that many people are having wifi issues in *Ubuntu 20.04.
I can now say that my wifi is working in perfection but when I first installed 20.04 (fresh install) the wifi literally did not last one minute. Literally.

As I am not exactly a computer genius (far, waaaaaayyyy far), I make use of tools like CherryTree to keep entries/logs of every single solution for every single problem I have found at some point in Linux. Even every app I install and remove is in there for each OS, in case I need to do it again or do a fresh install in a future version. So all I had to do was copy my "wifi fix 20.04" entry and paste it on the thread.

Just a note, I changed google to cloudfare in the info, it makes web pages loading even faster.

[GreyGeek]

Nice report! Thanks for passing that info along. Others will benefit from it. "Paying it forward!"

[pemartins]

I googled what you said and even considered using google translator lol but I think I figured it out, it means that for you Cloudfare's 1.1.1.1 is faster than google, right?

Is the way I can find that out for me to just type on konsole ping 8.8.8.8 and ping 1.1.1.1?
If so, here are the results, I kindly ask you to look at them and let me know which one is better:

pemartins@pemartins-X55U: ~ $ ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=118 time=26.3 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=118 time=25.1 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=118 time=25.9 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=4 ttl=118 time=25.0 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=5 ttl=118 time=25.9 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=6 ttl=118 time=33.7 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=7 ttl=118 time=23.9 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=8 ttl=118 time=24.7 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=9 ttl=118 time=31.5 ms
^C
--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
9 packets transmitted, 9 received, 0% packet loss, time 8009ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 23.880/26.868/33.685/3.178 ms
pemartins@pemartins-X55U: ~ $ ping 1.1.1.1
PING 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=59 time=19.3 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=59 time=25.4 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=59 time=89.4 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=59 time=24.7 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=59 time=16.8 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=59 time=16.3 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=59 time=19.1 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=59 time=17.8 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=59 time=16.1 ms
^C
--- 1.1.1.1 ping statistics ---
9 packets transmitted, 9 received, 0% packet loss, time 8011ms

I'm streaming the UFC event, do not know if it can influence the results.

Btw I made a correction to nohwcrypt, I screw that up and it does have to be nohwcrypt=0. I had it set to one and just lost ip twice in a row.

Again I can't state that enough: thank you very much!

[jlittle]

Thank you for posting the details.

5- Installed resolvconf, set google dns to be used ...

In my country (NZ), or maybe just with my ISP, Google DNS goes to Sydney, with a ping of 31 ms or so, but Cloudflare (on 1.1.1.1 or 2606:4700:4700::1111) is 7 ms, suggesting the response comes from the same equipment that I connect to at my ISP.

[pemartins]

Yes I tested some kernels and I think that finally I've got the wifi stable, fast and the web pages loading at a normal good speed.
@GreyGeek thank you so much for all your help, time and patience!

- - -

So... I'm going to list what I did and it was a lot of stuff, each small thing helped improving either on stability or speeding up the connection.
It's going to sound like something that is not advisable to do, I did so many things that it looks like I went on google, browsed for fixes and tweaks and applied everything I kept on finding. Well I kinda did that but on a trial and error basis, and the following list contains only the tweaks that helped me achieve a good wifi connection in focal 20.04.

1- Changed wifi router settings, moved to channel 9 and changed encryption to WPA2-AES with no WEP or TKIP.

2- Set wifi power save to off:

sudo sed -i 's/wifi.powersave = 3/wifi.powersave = 2/' /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf

3- Set my country code, which is PT:

sudo iw reg set PT
sudo sed -i 's/^REG.*=$/&PT/' /etc/default/crda

4- Set nohwcrypt to zero:

echo "options rt2800pci nohwcrypt=0" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rt2800pci.conf
sudo modprobe -rfv rt2800pci
sudo modprobe -v rt2800pci

5- Installed resolvconf, set cloudfare's dns to be used because is the faster one for me, created a file named resolv_cloudfare.conf in etc containing solely the cloudfare dns (this is not clever but it stops network manager from overwriting resolv.conf) and linked the resolv.conf file to it and (re)started the service:

sudo apt-get install resolvconf
echo "nameserver 1.1.1.1" | sudo tee -a /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head > /dev/null
echo "nameserver 1.1.1.1" | sudo tee /etc/resolv_cloudfare.conf > /dev/null
sudo mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.bak
sudo ln -s /etc/resolv_cloudfare.conf /etc/resolv.conf
sudo systemctl restart resolvconf.service
sudo modprobe -rfv rt2800pci
sudo modprobe -v rt2800pci

6- Stopped and disabled systemd-resolved:

sudo systemctl stop systemd-resolved
sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved

7- Disabled ipv6:

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1
sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=1

8- Set IPv4 precedence over IPv6 by uncommenting #precedence ::ffff:0:0/96 100 in the file /etc/gai.conf

9- Since I use tlp, I made sure tlp was setting the wifi power save always to off by editing /etc/tlp.conf:

WIFI_PWR_ON_AC=off
WIFI_PWR_ON_BAT=off

10- On the wifi connection I applied these tweaks:

Wifi
Restricted to device (MAC address do modem)

IPv4
Method: Manual
DNS: 1.1.1.1,1.0.0.1
Address: 192.168.1.7
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1

IPv6
Method: Ignored

11- I installed an application with gui for easily install/remove kernels named Mainline and installed the latest release of kernel 4.20. And applied the tweaks concerning the kernel again.

12- And, why not... I even discovered an amazing web browser called Waterfox and it is probably the fastest web browser around these days (it's based on Firefox so all the addons are there). It is now my default browser.

That was about it. Cheaper by the dozen!

[GreyGeek]

How much faster is "way, way faster"?
Is your browser fast enough that the current kernel can be used?
What kernel were you using when your wifi worked normally? Install it and see if that helps. It may, however, interfere with changes that expect the newest kernel, but testing is the way to find out.

[pemartins]

I figured out how to install the kernels, I found an app named "Mainline" and was able to install and test different kernels. Tried both the latest 4.19 and the latest 5.7, unfortunately neither showed any improvements concerning the web pages loading speed.