WiFi Disconnecting

Knowledge · January 31, 2019, 6:53pm

I have a Librem 13 v2.

If I have the laptop open, eventually the WiFi shuts down for some reason. Like it is going into some kind of power save and stopping it (I’m guessing) because the Internet stops working. I have to switch it to airplane mode and back before it works again.

For the record, it’s not connecting to another WiFi host, or losing an IP or anything. I’m well experienced in troubleshooting network connectivity issues, and this is like the device just goes to sleep in the laptop until I manually reset it. Happens after 15 minutes or so.

Anyone seen this? Know of a solution? I have done the usual of apt update, apt upgrade, etc. So everything is up to date. But so far, no luck.

Kevin

nickbrum · January 31, 2019, 7:56pm

Me too. i have same version as you and thought it was either me messing up the settings or my router.
turns out its neither.
i have to re-boot to get the wifi back up as airplane mode doesn’t do the trick for me.
Anyone got any ideas?

2disbetter · January 31, 2019, 8:10pm

I meaning baring any software issues, it could be that the radio on your wireless card is burning out. Good news it is easy to replace (i believe). Best to contact Purism customer support.

jeremiah · February 1, 2019, 1:33am

I have a different Librem (v3) but I haven’t seen this. Are there any messages from dmesg? Or in the system log?

nickbrum · February 1, 2019, 7:23pm

Dmseg error gave this

firmware: failed to load i915/skl_dmc_ver1_27.bin (-2)
[ 1.485898] firmware_class: See https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for information about missing firmware
[ 1.485902] i915 0000:00:02.0: Direct firmware load for i915/skl_dmc_ver1_27.bin failed with error -2
[ 1.485904] i915 0000:00:02.0: Failed to load DMC firmware i915/skl_dmc_ver1_27.bin. Disabling runtime power management.
[ 1.485906] i915 0000:00:02.0: DMC firmware homepage: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/i915

so i searched through Startpage and got this.

nickbrum · February 1, 2019, 8:52pm

Take it back it didn’t work, Wifi still dropping out.
how do i get to the system log?

jeremiah · February 2, 2019, 4:54pm

Should be in

/var/log/syslog

You can also look in the journal to see if there are any issues;

sudo journalctl

Might be interesting to see what this is saying;

sudo journalctl -t NetworkManager

Also;

sudo journalctl -t wpa_supplicant

nickbrum · February 3, 2019, 7:48pm

journalctl -t NetworkManager

gives me
Feb 03 19:00:55 librem NetworkManager[1690]: [1549220455.4889] dhcp6 (wlp1s0): request timed out

and
journalctl -t wpa_supplicant

gives

Feb 02 23:13:26 librem wpa_supplicant[1672]: wlp1s0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=CORE type=WORLD
Feb 02 23:13:26 librem wpa_supplicant[1672]: nl80211: deinit ifname=wlp1s0 disabled_11b_rates=0
Feb 02 23:13:26 librem wpa_supplicant[1672]: wlp1s0: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING

nickbrum · February 13, 2019, 6:43pm

anyone got any ideas?
my Wifi is now dropping out every 40 mins.

Knowledge · February 13, 2019, 6:57pm

After digging further, it appears my problem was related to Docker. Docker was putting the WiFi to sleep. Uninstalling it solved the problem. Not sure why, as I don’t have this issue with Docker on other platforms, but at least I know it was not a hardware or driver problem.

wctaylor · February 13, 2019, 10:00pm

Have you opened your computer to check the connections on the Wifi card? While I don’t really think it’s a loose wire issue based on the error log, it might not hurt to check.

jeremiah · February 16, 2019, 1:20am

I think journalctl -t wpa_supplicant is onto something. That CTRL-EVEN-TERMINATING seems important. Also, why dhcp6? Are you on an IP 6 network? Are you behind a Google router or similar?

jeremiah · February 16, 2019, 1:24am

Is this all the output that journalctl can produce? Running it on my system produces a number of lines including

-- Logs begin at Wed 2019-02-13 13:49:51 EST, end at Fri 2019-02-15 20:21:26 EST. --

Would you be kind enough to dump all your journalctl output? Also, the syslog might hold some more info, try

sudo grep -i wlp1s0 /var/log/syslog

nickbrum · February 18, 2019, 7:36pm

i assume you want the readout from when the Wifi goes down?
Thanks for the help so far

jeremiah · February 20, 2019, 7:46pm

Sure, whatever output you can get that helps us debug the issue is most welcome.

nickbrum · February 27, 2019, 9:33pm

thanks for all the help.
i eventually found a forum for Ubuntu that had the same problem and in my case the solution was to remove Wicd Network Manager as it was causing the issue.

Ralf · February 21, 2021, 12:46pm

I have the same issue running PureOS on a Macbookpro.
Randomly the internet just disconnects. The wifi symbol is still showing. I have plugged in a USB wifi in addition to the built in wifi. This helps some but the internet still disconnects randomly.
To get back on, I have to turn off the network and turn it back on at the top right in the status bar.
Any solutions?