[SOLVED] NetworkManager cannot use my Wifi card any more

PhilippD · 2021-12-17 18:48:07

Dear all,

I have always used NetworkManager to connect to the Wifi. At some point the wifi card in my laptop caused me troubles because the connection quality became poor.
So some months ago I looked for and found a way to disable it while using a USB Wifi adapter as a replacement. Unfortunately I don't remember what exactly I did to stop NetworkManager using the built in Wifi card to connect. Either way, this has worked well until yesterday.

Starting from yesterday I didn't have internet any longer on this laptop. I didn't find a way for either the built in or the USB adapter to work. In order to simplify the issue I removed the USB adapter and tried to get a connection again from the built in card. I purposely don't give more information on what I tried to get the USB adapter to work, in order to keep this post as simple as possible. I plan to look into that more once I understand what is happening with the wifi card.

What I found is that upon boot, the wifi card interface is blocked by rfkill. Even after unblocking, NetworkManager (through nm-applet) does not let me use the wifi. It states that "Wifi is disabled".
An interesting observation is that upon restarting the NetworkManager service, the wifi card is again blocked in rfkill.
At the end of the post there is a log of NetworkManager activity. It detects that rfkill is called but it is not clear why.

So I took another step back and disabled the NetworkManager and connected through wpa_supplicant, following the steps in the Arch wiki (ip link set interface up; wpa_passphrase; wpa_supplicant; dhcpcd). This works without issue.
The question is why can I use wpa_supplicant but not NetworkManager?

I cannot find anything in /etc/NetworkManager.
Also there is no hardware fault. I have an Ubuntu installation on the same laptop from which I can use the Wifi card in the same way as always.

This is the relevant output of journalctl -u NetworkManager after a reboot. The interface is wlp3s0.

-- Boot 9525e423b34946c18b1b03c79042e0e7 --
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 systemd[1]: Starting Network Manager...
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.2350] NetworkManager (version 1.32.12-1) is starting... (for the first time)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.2351] Read config: /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf (lib: 20-connectivity.conf)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 systemd[1]: Started Network Manager.
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.2424] bus-manager: acquired D-Bus service "org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.2573] manager[0x5619beb61040]: monitoring kernel firmware directory '/lib/firmware'.
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5108] hostname: hostname: using hostnamed
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5108] hostname: hostname changed from (none) to "t400"
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5118] dns-mgr[0x5619beb19250]: init: dns=default,systemd-resolved rc-manager=symlink
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5145] rfkill2: found Wi-Fi radio killswitch (at /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.1/0000:03:00.0/ieee80211/phy0/rfkill2) (driver iwlwi
fi)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5151] manager[0x5619beb61040]: rfkill: Wi-Fi hardware radio set disabled
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5152] manager[0x5619beb61040]: rfkill: WWAN hardware radio set enabled
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5308] Loaded device plugin: NMOvsFactory (/usr/lib/NetworkManager/1.32.12-1/libnm-device-plugin-ovs.so)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5330] Loaded device plugin: NMWifiFactory (/usr/lib/NetworkManager/1.32.12-1/libnm-device-plugin-wifi.so)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5561] Loaded device plugin: NMTeamFactory (/usr/lib/NetworkManager/1.32.12-1/libnm-device-plugin-team.so)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5574] Loaded device plugin: NMAtmManager (/usr/lib/NetworkManager/1.32.12-1/libnm-device-plugin-adsl.so)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5659] Loaded device plugin: NMWwanFactory (/usr/lib/NetworkManager/1.32.12-1/libnm-device-plugin-wwan.so)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5701] Loaded device plugin: NMBluezManager (/usr/lib/NetworkManager/1.32.12-1/libnm-device-plugin-bluetooth.so)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5712] manager: rfkill: Wi-Fi enabled by radio killswitch; disabled by state file
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5714] manager: rfkill: WWAN enabled by radio killswitch; enabled by state file
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5716] manager: Networking is enabled by state file
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5727] dhcp-init: Using DHCP client 'internal'
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.5746] settings: Loaded settings plugin: keyfile (internal)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.6967] device (lo): carrier: link connected
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.6977] manager: (lo): new Generic device (/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/1)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.7011] manager: (enp0s25): new Ethernet device (/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/2)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.7037] device (enp0s25): state change: unmanaged -> unavailable (reason 'managed', sys-iface-state: 'external')
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.9433] manager: (wlp3s0): new 802.11 Wi-Fi device (/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/3)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.9453] device (wlp3s0): state change: unmanaged -> unavailable (reason 'managed', sys-iface-state: 'external')
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.9469] device (wlp3s0): set-hw-addr: set MAC address to 02:BE:79:05:1A:2E (scanning)
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.9561] manager: rfkill: Wi-Fi now disabled by radio killswitch
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.9598] ovsdb: Could not connect: No such file or directory
Dec 17 18:48:48 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763328.9599] ovsdb: disconnected from ovsdb
Dec 17 18:48:54 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763334.9394] manager: startup complete
Dec 17 18:48:54 t400 NetworkManager[393]: <info>  [1639763334.9746] agent-manager: agent[7497477a7a53a367,:1.14/org.freedesktop.nm-applet/1000]: agent registered

Output of dmesg | grep iwlwifi

[   10.623763] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: can't disable ASPM; OS doesn't have ASPM control
[   10.624739] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-6000-6.ucode failed with error -2
[   10.624808] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-6000-5.ucode failed with error -2
[   10.629350] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: loaded firmware version 9.221.4.1 build 25532 6000-4.ucode op_mode iwldvm
[   10.973592] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG enabled
[   10.973599] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUGFS enabled
[   10.973603] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TRACING enabled
[   10.973609] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Centrino(R) Ultimate-N 6300 AGN, REV=0x74
[   11.021975] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlp3s0: renamed from wlan0
[   66.487066] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x0-0x3-0x1
[   66.749159] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x0-0x3-0x1
[  389.162948] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x0-0x3-0x1
[  389.429156] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x0-0x3-0x1

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Philipp

Last edited by PhilippD (2021-12-17 19:57:23)

mcloaked · 2021-12-17 19:04:24

There is an old thread that may be related to your issue at https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=226356

PhilippD · 2021-12-17 19:58:23

Thank you. I think I simply pressed "disable networking" in nm-applet by accident or without noticing. So there was nothing else to it after all.

Arch Linux

#1 2021-12-17 18:48:07

[SOLVED] NetworkManager cannot use my Wifi card any more

#2 2021-12-17 19:04:24

Re: [SOLVED] NetworkManager cannot use my Wifi card any more

#3 2021-12-17 19:58:23

Re: [SOLVED] NetworkManager cannot use my Wifi card any more

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