Arch Linux

rohtua

Member

Registered: 2022-12-22

Posts: 4

No USB, WiFi or Touchpad after installing usbutils and usb_modeswitch

Hi,

I was trying to get a usb to ethernet dongle working with my laptop. After some research I found a few posts that said I should try using usb_modeswitch so I've installed that plus the USB utils package (for the lsusb) command. I've rebooted the laptop incase it was needed for the packages to take effect.

When the laptop has booted up again the touchpad doesn't work, usb devices don't work (when I plug in say a USB stick nothing happens. I can see it appear in the journalctl log but that's it there's no /dev/sda1 or anything like that) and WiFi doesn't work (its as though it can't see the device, only the loopback interface appears when I run 'ip a').

I tried removing the packages but no joy. I'm a bit stumped as to what has gone wrong and what I can try to fix it. The only things working are the touchscreen and keyboard when booted into arch. Using a live USB with ubuntu on or even in the BIOS everything works fine so I don't think its faulty devices. The laptop is an Dell XPS 9550

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 9,003

Website

Re: No USB, WiFi or Touchpad after installing usbutils and usb_modeswitch

You should probably share the journal contents. A vague description of a single entry doesn't help us much.

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Jin, Jîyan, Azadî

rohtua

Member

Registered: 2022-12-22

Posts: 4

Re: No USB, WiFi or Touchpad after installing usbutils and usb_modeswitch

I would but I'm a bit stuck as I can't connect the laptop to the internet due to the issue nor mount a usb drive to copy it off as a file.

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 9,003

Website

Re: No USB, WiFi or Touchpad after installing usbutils and usb_modeswitch

Use a live ISO then: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System … al_to_view

EDIT: and use https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_o … n_services to share.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2022-12-22 17:45:06)

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Jin, Jîyan, Azadî

rohtua

Member

Registered: 2022-12-22

Posts: 4

Re: No USB, WiFi or Touchpad after installing usbutils and usb_modeswitch

Hi, I should have though of that.

Here you go: https://pastebin.com/ib91MjrK

rohtua

Member

Registered: 2022-12-22

Posts: 4

Re: No USB, WiFi or Touchpad after installing usbutils and usb_modeswitch

Hi really bizarre update. Not really sure what's fixed it but basically I was trying different things and I reinstalled the 'linux' package with 'sudo pacman -S linux'. This didn't solve the issue but did break grub i.e. the laptop wouldn't boot so I booted using Super Grub2 Disk and when the laptop booted using the 'Detected Operating System' option everything was working. However if I booted using the entries detected in the grub.cfg file the touchpad etc. didn't work.

I've reinstalled grub now and it all appears to be working so far including the ethernet dongle that I couldn't get working originally. I've absolutely no clue as to why it stopped working or what it is that's fixed it as I very much doubt that installing usbutils and usb_modeswitch would do anything at all to grub. If anyone can glean anything from the log above I'd be very interested to know what the issue could have been.