Arch Linux

mcfloundinho

Member

Registered: 2015-11-13

Posts: 1

Failure connecting to some WLANs

Hi,

I have some trouble connecting to my campus WLAN, though it works flawlessly with my home router. The campus WLAN does not require authentication. When I attempt to connect to it with NetworkManager, I get stuck at the "configuring interface" stage, and after about half a minute, I get two popup error messages:
Wireless interface wlo1 - The WiFi network could not be found
Connection "Tsinghua" disconnected

The log (see below) says "association took too long, failing activation".

It shouldn't be a problem with the campus WLAN, since my smartphone, and even Windows on the same computer can connect. And it shouldn't be a NetworkManager-specific problem, since neither netctl nor the "iw" command succeed.

Here are some similar situations:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=175745
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=163450

However, none of the solutions work for me. I've tried disabling netctl, disabling ipv6, and disabling 802.11n, with no luck.

Some maybe relevant output:

➜  ~  lspci | grep Network
07:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. Device 539a

➜  ~  readlink /sys/class/net/wlo1/device/driver
../../../../bus/pci/drivers/rt2800pci

➜  ~  sudo journalctl -u NetworkManager | tail
Nov 13 11:50:42 mcfloundinho NetworkManager[375]: <info>  (wlo1): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning
Nov 13 11:50:44 mcfloundinho NetworkManager[375]: <info>  (wlo1): supplicant interface state: scanning -> authenticating
Nov 13 11:50:44 mcfloundinho NetworkManager[375]: <info>  (wlo1): supplicant interface state: authenticating -> disconnected
Nov 13 11:50:48 mcfloundinho NetworkManager[375]: <warn>  (wlo1): Activation: (wifi) association took too long, failing activation
Nov 13 11:50:48 mcfloundinho NetworkManager[375]: <info>  (wlo1): device state change: config -> failed (reason 'ssid-not-found') [50 120 53]
Nov 13 11:50:48 mcfloundinho NetworkManager[375]: <info>  NetworkManager state is now DISCONNECTED
Nov 13 11:50:48 mcfloundinho NetworkManager[375]: <info>  Disabling autoconnect for connection 'Tsinghua'.
Nov 13 11:50:48 mcfloundinho NetworkManager[375]: <warn>  (wlo1): Activation: failed for connection 'Tsinghua'
Nov 13 11:50:48 mcfloundinho NetworkManager[375]: <info>  (wlo1): device state change: failed -> disconnected (reason 'none') [120 30 0]
Nov 13 11:50:49 mcfloundinho NetworkManager[375]: <info>  (wlo1): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> inactive

Even more curiously, the network DOES connect after a few dozen retries. It seems totally random at which point it will succeed. As a workaround, I've written a script to keep retrying:

i=0
while [ "$(iw dev wlo1 link)" = 'Not connected.' ]; do
    echo "retry count ${i}"
    sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager.service
    sudo systemctl start NetworkManager.service
    i=$((i+1))
    sleep 5
done

The retry count before success varies from 10 to 60.

Any idea why this happens?

Greets.