[Solved] Changed WiFi Card, Long Black Screen Before Desktop Appears

Annoyingduck · 2019-04-02 02:45:01

This is an older Dell 660s desktop with the stock Dell Atheros m2 Wifi card in it that's only capable of 2.4Ghz which is running on the default ath9k driver from the kernel. Board is an Intel with a Pentium chip and I'm using the default kernel drivers. Using Lightdm as a DM, with XFCE as a DE. I have no custom hooks, This is a very basic fresh install. I wanted 5ghz so I popped in an Intel m2 wireless card from a broken laptop, booted to command line only, updated my mkinitcpio, and then rebooted. Upon boot after all the systemd processes completed (all without error) the computer just hangs on a black screen for about a min before booting into the desktop. The card does work, and works much better than the old card (it's faster and I get 5ghz), but the long boot is deal breaker. What would be causing this? Is there a file that is looking for the old wireless card? Something that I need to change in Lightdm.conf? I figured rebuilding my mkinitcpio would do the trick, I also updated grub for good measure. I've googled every thing I could think of in relation to changing a wireless card and post actions and could not find anything. Anyone have any advice?

For now I put the old card in and the desktop is back to booting right up instantly without issue, but I really would like to swap this card out for something better.

Last edited by Annoyingduck (2019-04-03 21:05:49)

Trilby · 2019-04-02 02:54:35

Annoyingduck wrote:

What would be causing this? ... I figured rebuilding my mkinitcpio would do the trick, I also updated grub for good measure..

Neither your initramfs nor your boot loader would know or care about a wireless card. But your network management services probably would - look there.

Annoyingduck · 2019-04-02 03:14:03

I'm using networkmanager. I thought that just relied upon the initial driver loaded from the kernel and then just picked up from there (meaning, I thought the card is irrelevant to network manager). Digging into the networkmanager files, I'm not seeing anything related to the driver, nor anything on the arch wiki. Again here I'm just assuming this is something relating to a file thinking the old card is in there, I just don't know. The wiki mentioned something about large journal creations, but if that were my issue than popping the old card back in still should have had a long boot, which it doesn't.

Trilby · 2019-04-02 03:59:23

Networkmanager is configured to manage particular interfaces, the new card most likely has a different interface name.

What are the old / new interfaces? How did you configure network manager? What's in the journal from a boot with the delay?

Annoyingduck · 2019-04-02 04:12:49

Trilby wrote:

Networkmanager is configured to manage particular interfaces, the new card most likely has a different interface name.
What are the old / new interfaces? How did you configure network manager? What's in the journal from a boot with the delay?

I gotta tear a good amount of the guts out of the machine to put the new card back in due to it being buried in the chassis. Before I do that was kinda looking for a place to start (if possible). As far as configuration of network manager... None! Installed it and stopped the dchpcd service from the installer and started the networkmanager service. That's it. How does one go about changing the cards interface name with networkmanager? I couldn't find any file that linked the 2. Otherwise I'll have to wait till tomorrow to get the new card back in again and pull the journals. This is all a fresh install. Just didn't realize the original card was only 2.4ghz.

Ropid · 2019-04-02 05:18:23

You use a tool to change the setup of devices in NetworkManager. I don't know where it actually saves what was configured, it seemed to me it's not built for manually going through that, you are supposed to a tool.

The tool that comes with NetworkManager itself is "nmcli", a command line tool. I don't understand it.

There's a graphical tool in the package "nm-connection-editor". Perhaps use that program to take a look at NetworkManager's setup.

Annoyingduck · 2019-04-03 21:05:19

So a little update on this issue. I'm going to mark the thread as solved, though the issue is not really solved (sorry for those that stumble upon this thread). The card I was replacing was an Atheros with a much newer Intel card. I screwed around as much as I could with trying to get the Intel card to work, and I just couldn't. So I ended up taking another Atheros card from another broken laptop that was capable of 5Ghz, popped that one in the desktop. It booted right up, no configurations required, and is working great with full 5ghz access. Card uses the same ath9k driver. It's quite possible that this older Dell G645 pentium board is just not able to handle that newer Intel card in general. I'll never know though because I'm up and operational and I'm not gonna mess with this thing any longer!

Last edited by Annoyingduck (2019-04-03 21:06:43)

Trilby · 2019-04-03 21:31:24

Or it's more likely that very similar hardware was more likely given the same interface name which would have been ridiculously easy to check as advised in post #4.

Annoyingduck · 2019-04-03 21:44:44

Trilby wrote:

Or it's more likely that very similar hardware was more likely given the same interface name which would have been ridiculously easy to check as advised in post #4.

I did check, did everything that was advised here and much more. The current third card is known as wlp3so, while the Intel card I couldn't get to work properly was known as wlp2so. I followed through with everything that was suggested here. Network manager read all the cards and assigned them each new device name. Device naming was not the issue, NetworkManager handled that on its own.

Arch Linux

#1 2019-04-02 02:45:01

[Solved] Changed WiFi Card, Long Black Screen Before Desktop Appears

#2 2019-04-02 02:54:35

Re: [Solved] Changed WiFi Card, Long Black Screen Before Desktop Appears

#3 2019-04-02 03:14:03

Re: [Solved] Changed WiFi Card, Long Black Screen Before Desktop Appears

#4 2019-04-02 03:59:23

Re: [Solved] Changed WiFi Card, Long Black Screen Before Desktop Appears

#5 2019-04-02 04:12:49

Re: [Solved] Changed WiFi Card, Long Black Screen Before Desktop Appears

#6 2019-04-02 05:18:23

Re: [Solved] Changed WiFi Card, Long Black Screen Before Desktop Appears

#7 2019-04-03 21:05:19

Re: [Solved] Changed WiFi Card, Long Black Screen Before Desktop Appears

#8 2019-04-03 21:31:24

Re: [Solved] Changed WiFi Card, Long Black Screen Before Desktop Appears

#9 2019-04-03 21:44:44

Re: [Solved] Changed WiFi Card, Long Black Screen Before Desktop Appears

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