Score:0

Wifi interface seemingly disabling itself?

cn flag

When I booted my laptop today the Wifi suddenly wasn't working and I've been trying for the last two hours to make it work again. I think I fixed an issue or two down the way but I didn't really document anything. The problem I'm unable to solve now is this: My Wifi interface seems to be disabled and I can't (always??) enable it. But even when I was able to enable it the Wifi still wasn't working.

This is my output of lshw -C network:

WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
  *-network                 
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       logical name: enp1s0
       version: 0c
       serial: 30:65:ec:78:53:5c
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 firmware=rtl8168g-2_0.0.1 02/06/13 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=MII
       resources: irq:18 ioport:3000(size=256) memory:c1200000-c1200fff memory:c1000000-c1003fff
  *-network DISABLED
       description: Wireless interface
       product: Wireless 7265
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
       logical name: wlp2s0
       version: 48
       serial: 5c:e0:c5:03:6c:ea
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=5.4.0-88-generic firmware=17.3216344376.0 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
       resources: irq:48 memory:c1100000-c1101fff
  *-network
       description: Ethernet interface
       physical id: 1
       bus info: usb@1:1.2
       logical name: usb0
       serial: ce:4f:d0:53:fc:10
       capabilities: ethernet physical
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rndis_host driverversion=22-Aug-2005 firmware=RNDIS device ip=192.168.231.76 link=yes multicast=yes
WARNING: output may be incomplete or inaccurate, you should run this program as super-user.

Output of sudo rfkill list:

0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
2: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
5: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

Output of sudo systemctl status wpa_supplicant.service:

● wpa_supplicant.service - WPA supplicant
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/wpa_supplicant.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2021-10-02 15:42:54 CEST; 5h 5min ago
   Main PID: 1242 (wpa_supplicant)
      Tasks: 1 (limit: 9378)
     Memory: 3.3M
     CGroup: /system.slice/wpa_supplicant.service
             └─1242 /sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -s -O /run/wpa_supplicant

Okt 02 15:42:54 Lithographie systemd[1]: Starting WPA supplicant...
Okt 02 15:42:54 Lithographie wpa_supplicant[1242]: Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
Okt 02 15:42:54 Lithographie systemd[1]: Started WPA supplicant.

The first is my Ethernet connection that I don't use. The second is my wireless connection that miraculously stopped working today. The third is my workaround Tethering connection through my Phone.

modprobe -r iwlwifi and modprobe iwlwifi didn't work first, now they do but it didn't really change anything Also, when I try sudo ip link set wlp2s0 up sometimes it switches the interface to enabled (sometimes it doesn't), but still, Wifi isn't working.

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on an Acer Travelmate P236-M-57R4. Thanks for helping in advance!

Edit: Don't know if there is any connection, but I had some issues yesterday with the very unwise decision to chown -r my /usr/-folder with my main account. I think I resolved these, but maybe I didn't?

CrazyTux avatar
us flag
can you edit your question with the output of `sudo systemctl status wpa_supplicant.service` ? `wpa_supplicant` - Wi-Fi Protected Access client and IEEE 802.1X supplicant,
galexite avatar
pk flag
Does it start working when you run from a Terminal, `sudo rfkill unblock-all'?
cn flag
Thank you folks for your ideas! Those were actually among those I tried, I added the outputs above
galexite avatar
pk flag
I have a feeling your `chown` command may have modified permissions on some configuration used for network management, I'm afraid. Especially if the issues happened only after running that command.
cn flag
Oh no, that's what I feared. Can you give me a clue to find out what might be the issue?
Score:0
cn flag

The chown command was the problem, I figure. Got it with sudo apt-get purge wpasupplicant and re-installing with sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant and sudo apt-get install network-manager (installing from cache).

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