Arch Linux

injb

Member

Registered: 2019-11-13

Posts: 4

[SOLVED] Trouble with wifi

I am running Arch on a Dell xps13. Everything was previously working for a long time, but after leaving it shut down for a few months, I can no longer get the wifi to work. It's possible that I ran a complete update before shutting down the last time, and never tested it (I don't remember; however there's no way I did a partial update as I've read the wiki and would never do that.)

I have the Atheros QCA6174 chipset, but it looks like the driver it not getting loaded any longer. If I run lcpsi -k, then I see the wifi adapter, but there's no "Kernel driver" or "Kernel module" entry. It just shows me the manufacturer's details (sorry I can't post the exact output because I am working from a different machine here, but I'll type up exactly what it says if that's needed.)

I booted from a live Arch USB stick and I was able to get wifi working with no issues; the lspci command showed the driver and the instructions on the Arch wiki worked fine. I chrooted to my installed OS, and ran a complete update (pacman -Syu). After rebooting the installed OS, the issue is the same. I still don't see a driver in lcpsi.

I've tried manually running "modprobe ath10k" and lots of variations like "modprobe ath_pci" but they all result in "FATAL: Module xxx not found in directory /lib/modules/5.1.12-arch1-ARCH".

There's no reference in dmesg to "wireless", "ath" or anything else I can think of to try.

Can anyone suggest what troubleshooting steps I should do next? I've done lots of searching, but I haven't found any explanation for why the adapter would be identified correctly, but no driver loaded for it. The wifi is obviously working fine since it works via the live USB.

Last edited by injb (2019-11-13 18:36:59)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,740

Re: [SOLVED] Trouble with wifi

The kernel you are booting into is out of date in comparison with what's installed in your system (you don't "just" have trouble with wifi, you are going to have issues with all kernel modules). This happens either on partial updates, or in this specific case very often because you are using UEFI and should have your ESP mounted to /boot but didn't when you ran the update. From the live disk, mount all your partitions properly, chroot in and run

pacman -Syu linux

Should this not suffice elaborate on your boot loader setup (which one, all configurations etc.), the partitions (

lsblk -f 

) set up in your system, and maybe throw in a pacman.log as well as

pacman -Qs linux

post all of these in [ code ] [ /code ] tags without the spaces.

Last edited by V1del (2019-11-13 15:34:41)

injb

Member

Registered: 2019-11-13

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Trouble with wifi

The kernel you are booting into is out of date in comparison with what's installed in your system (you don't "just" have trouble with wifi, you are going to have issues with all kernel modules). This happens either on partial updates, or in this specific case very often because you are using UEFI and should have your ESP mounted to /boot but didn't when you ran the update. From the live disk, mount all your partitions properly, chroot in and run

pacman -Syu linux

Should this not suffice elaborate on your boot loader setup (which one, all configurations etc.), the partitions (

lsblk -f 

) set up in your system, and maybe throw in a pacman.log as well as

pacman -Qs linux

post all of these in [ code ] [ /code ] tags without the spaces.

You are right. When I did the pacman update last time, I mounted my boot partition, but I did it before running arch-chroot, and I should have done it after. I did that and it's working now.

However, the interface name has changed from wlp58s0 to wlan0. So now this steps times out on startup:

A start job is running for /sys/subsystem/net/devices/wlp58s0

Is the name change caused by a driver update? Can I change it back?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,740

Re: [SOLVED] Trouble with wifi

Are you using iwd? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Iw … leshooting

injb

Member

Registered: 2019-11-13

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Trouble with wifi

Are you using iwd? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Iw … leshooting

No, I'm using netctl. I was able get rid of that startup message by removing the old netctl systemd service.

I'd still be interested to know why the interface name changed, and how it could be changed back, if anyone knows. It doesn't really matter, I'm just curious.