Arch Linux

FelineFowl

Member

From: Ireland

Registered: 2018-03-30

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] Wireless Connections Cause Input To Stop

I recently got my first Arch installation up and running with Xfce4. Everything was working for most of the day. I was able to restart and my wireless configurations stayed, any system settings I'd changed stayed. However when I shut my laptop down and turned it on again rather than just restarting, I thought my laptop had froze. My fans were going quite loud for about five seconds and then they stopped and CPU usage returned to normal. My trackpad and keyboard also stop working, but the computer is still active. The clock is still going and any programs open such as htop still update.

After some investigation, I discovered that my laptop only does this when it's trying to connect to a WiFi network. Ethernet works fine, but for various reasons it's not practical for me to be able to use Ethernet full time. Fn+F12 will turn my wireless card off, and I can do this at the greeter. However even with Wireless turned on, the greeter works fine (I assume because it's not trying to connect to Wireless at lightdm). I can then log in and use my laptop until I turn my Wireless card back on. Then the fans go and CPU usage maxes out for a little bit before returning to normal. My input still doesn't work. This means I can't use Fn+F12 to turn my Wireless card off. No matter how long I leave it, this doesn't change. I have yet to test it with an external keyboard and mouse, and with a USB Wireless Dongle, but I'm not hopeful. If I turn off connecting to Wireless in the NetworkManager and keep my wireless card on, this of course doesn't happen.

I looked around a bit and couldn't find anyone facing even a remotely similar issue. Why does my input cut off when connecting to WiFi? My wireless card is rtl8192ce, which I know doesn't have the best Linux support, but it worked perfectly fine when I was just restarting my computer. I don't know what could have changed between just restarting the computer a few times and doing a hard shutdown. Normally I'd chalk this up to a driver issue, but if it is it's a very strange one. Are there any logs I can check to see what exactly is going on?

Many thanks.

Last edited by FelineFowl (2018-03-30 12:48:28)

FelineFowl

Member

From: Ireland

Registered: 2018-03-30

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] Wireless Connections Cause Input To Stop

After going through a handful of USB wireless dongles (including the rtl8812au chipset, which I use on my KDE neon install) I found one that worked. I then proceeded to look through some projects to find an up to date wireless driver for my rtl8192ce chipset. I found this one which works with kernel 4.15: https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce … /rtl8192ce

This fixed my issue. I didn't have to reboot myself, but it worked upon reboot. Hopefully this helps anyone who comes across a similar issue!