Cannot connect to wifi, cannot change network settings [SOLVED]

hooya · 2014-11-02 19:09:18

Asus EeePC.

lspci -k shows

Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 adapter is the hardware, and appears to be working. Kernel driver in use is bcma-pci-bridge
In Gnome, Wi-Fi status shows "not connected"
"Select Network" shows a list of available APs, I click on ours which is set up as WPA2 PSK. Click Connect. Nothing happens. At all, no dialog for password, no attempt to connect seems to be processed by the computer. This happens with open networks as well (coffee shop or whatever). Click connect but nothing further happens.
From the applet I can't even seem to be able to "Turn off" the WiFi at all.

From within Wi-Fi settings in the applet, I can see a list of available access points but clicking on them does nothing. There is no available way for any user input, although I can click the toggle to turn off Wi-Fi from within there.
I can't forget networks in my history here either: click "History" and I can see a long list of previous networks. I can check box for them all and say "forget" but then they're back when I open the history again.

So it seems like my NetworkManager is just simply not working. Can't change the current state of "not connected" to anything at all.

When I attempt to connect using Wifi-menu I get:

Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant

>WPA Authentication/Association Failed {FAIL}

When I attempt to connect to any network. It never asks for password.

Gnome-Keyring is installed.
Netctl is NOT installed.
NetworkManager is installed and running according to systemctl

I've been running this Arch install on this machine for two years. This is not a new install problem. No hardware can be changed on this machine, so it's not hardware related (unless the wireless device itself crapped out).

Possibly related, I cannot shutdown the machine from within Gnome. I have to "sudo shutdown -h now" from a terminal. Seems to hibernate/sleep properly when the lid is closed though.

All of the results of searching on this indicate usually the problem is multiple network config softwares installed at the same time, like netctl and networkmanager together. Or not having a keyring manager installed That is not the case here unless it is one of those that is broken, but they don't seem to be.

I have no access to any wired connection at the moment at all, so I can't download anything to this computer at the moment. There's gotta be a way to get wifi working again, as it was just working last week. Haven't even done a pacman upgrade between when it last worked and when it stopped working.

Last edited by hooya (2014-12-02 15:20:20)

ewaller · 2014-11-03 00:28:04

Let us take this piece by piece.

First, what is the name of your wireless interface ? If you are not sure, please post the output of ip link
What is the output of iw list ?
What is the output of sudo iw dev wlan0 scan (except, replace wlan0 with whatever your wireless network is called)?

hooya · 2014-11-03 18:44:13

iw is not installed on the system. Can you help with the proper iwconfig commands or is that part of my problem?

Wireless interface is wlan0, or are you asking more specifically about the model/hardware?

ewaller · 2014-11-03 18:53:08

The commands would be just iwconfig in lieu of iwlist
The other command would be sudo iwlist scan

I had wanted to know the name of the interface, which would be wlan0. But, as you dis not install iw and are using the legacy iwconfig, I gather you have one of the wirless chipsets not supported by iw. So, now that you mention it, what is your wireless chip set?

hooya · 2014-11-03 19:00:13

I did mention the hardware is a Broadcom BCM4313

It may have been an issue with the Broadcom not working with iw. Not sure, as I haven't really changed things on this machine much (it's my wife's and I regularly update it but don't fuss with it much beyond "get it to work"). Like I said, the install is 2 years old, so compatibility may have even changed since I initially set it up.

I'm currently at work and without direct access to the computer in question. So I'll get those results later tonight.

Last edited by hooya (2014-11-03 19:02:03)

ewaller · 2014-11-03 19:08:15

hooya wrote:

I did mention the hardware is a Broadcom BCM4313.

So you did. Sorry about that

hooya · 2014-11-08 03:59:28

Iwlist scan reports loads of results. Mostly what I can see is details of the list if access points in the gnome interface. I just can't do anything with them.

Mysteriously the issue went away. The only thing I did was at one point the battery just drained and we let the laptop sit with a 0% battery for a week. Plugged it in and it connected to our home wifi with no issue at all. Marking as solved even though the actual issue was never uncovered.

Last edited by hooya (2014-12-02 15:20:03)

hooya · 2014-12-15 03:48:03

I just wanted to update that I finally figured out what the real problem was. I don't know how this happened, but somehow polkit was broken on the system, replaced with polkit-console or something. No idea when or how that happened, but installing polkit and letting pacman work the conflicts out solved not only the wifi issues, but the other issues with mounting the SD card, apparently the user couldn't shut down properly... yeah, lots of problems there.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-11-02 19:09:18

Cannot connect to wifi, cannot change network settings [SOLVED]

#2 2014-11-03 00:28:04

Re: Cannot connect to wifi, cannot change network settings [SOLVED]

#3 2014-11-03 18:44:13

Re: Cannot connect to wifi, cannot change network settings [SOLVED]

#4 2014-11-03 18:53:08

Re: Cannot connect to wifi, cannot change network settings [SOLVED]

#5 2014-11-03 19:00:13

Re: Cannot connect to wifi, cannot change network settings [SOLVED]

#6 2014-11-03 19:08:15

Re: Cannot connect to wifi, cannot change network settings [SOLVED]

#7 2014-11-08 03:59:28

Re: Cannot connect to wifi, cannot change network settings [SOLVED]

#8 2014-12-15 03:48:03

Re: Cannot connect to wifi, cannot change network settings [SOLVED]

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