Arch Linux

Poisson Aerohead

Member

Registered: 2013-04-09

Posts: 8

NetworkManager Unable to get Wifi Working [Resolved]

Hi, I've never used NetworkManager before. I have always been able to get by with wpa_supplicant, but I want to see if I can run Proton VPN from my laptop and it requires NM to work. I followed the instructions in the Arch Wiki:

$ nmcli device wifi list
$ nmcli device wifi connect BSSID password PASSWORD
Device 'wlp2s0' successfully activated with '9561b8a7-e3cb-490a-8aaf-990001bfe3c8'.
$ ip addr show

The wireless interface shows as:

3: wlp2s0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 32:94:46:75:17:b4 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr dc:a2:66:73:a1:5d

The wireless interface never acquires an address. Most runs of

$ ip route show

Show no output. Occasionally it will show my usual gateway (192.168.1.254) as

default via 192.168.1.254 dev wlp2s0 proto dhcp metric 600
192.168.1.0/24 dev wlp2s0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.249 metric 600

but it is gone the next time I execute that. A run of

 nmcli connection show 

does indeed show the wireless network name on the correct interface, and

 nmcli device wifi list 

now only shows the one network I am connected to, rather than all within range.

I have added the following configurations to "main":

systemd-resolved=false
dns=none

the first because the wiki said to (if I understood it correctly) and the second to prevent overwrite of my resolve.conf. I am not able to ping a URL, a hard coded external IP (8.8.8.8), or even the gateway (192.168.1.254). Attempts to add it as a default route return the "Nexthop has invalid gateway" error

Is there some obvious step I missed? Any help appreciated.

Last edited by Poisson Aerohead (2021-11-23 03:06:40)

Poisson Aerohead

Member

Registered: 2013-04-09

Posts: 8

Re: NetworkManager Unable to get Wifi Working [Resolved]

Since I see the first response to a question a few items down was whether anything is in dmesg, I see a bunch of these that look like it could be relevant:

[  492.200677] audit: type=1111 audit(1637630731.177:65): pid=517 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 msg='op=connection-add-activate uuid=9561b8a7-e3cb-490a-8aaf-990001bfe3c8 name="ATT7GsMeuI" pid=569 uid=1000 result=success exe="/usr/bin/NetworkManager" hostname=? addr=? terminal=? res=success'

Even though it says success, there seems to be no hostname or addr? Let me know if you need anything else.

Poisson Aerohead

Member

Registered: 2013-04-09

Posts: 8

Re: NetworkManager Unable to get Wifi Working [Resolved]

Possible solution. It looks like NM uses a builtin dhcp client by default, so if that fails it is recommended to change that. See here. At the very least, this means it was not an apples to apples comparison with the prior wpa_supplicant config (as I believed it was). So I'll try it and if it solves the issue I'll close the question.

Last edited by Poisson Aerohead (2021-11-23 03:03:48)

Poisson Aerohead

Member

Registered: 2013-04-09

Posts: 8

Re: NetworkManager Unable to get Wifi Working [Resolved]

I'm writing this now from a NetworkManager connection. We'll see if I get Proton to run.