WiFi Drivers/Network Card Issue

[MajorJalepino]

Hi all,

I've newly installed Gentoo on an acer nitro 5. I've gotten over the initial few common hiccups with new installs but now I'm at a loss with this.

Basically, I had a working system with WiFi connectivity after reading through the WiFi and wpa_supplicant sections of the handbook, but somewhere along the line this was lost. I have honestly no idea what I could possibly have changed to cause this issue, bar a couple of untimely battery-deaths while emerging some packages. Still... ???

Any way, upon boot I get a few error messages for failure to load modules iwlwifi.ko, iwlwvm.ko and iptables_nat.ko (and they are built as separate modules, and listed in etc/modules-load.d/networking.conf). When I log in, I have no connection to the internet .

Here are some command outputs I think you might find useful that I've learned from scouring other forum posts.

Kernel I re-built just now:

[NeddySeagoon]

MajorJalepino,

Welcome to Gentoo.

[MajorJalepino]

Thanks for the reply Neddy,

Here is the link to the dmesg dump:

http://dpaste.com/HWF2MYAEV

That's what I find bizarre, everything else shows that module is loaded but I still get the error messages on boot.

[NeddySeagoon]

MajorJalepino,

There is no sign of any attempt in dmesg to start wlp0s20f3.
I was expecting to see attempts to associate and authenticate but it didn't happen.

How do you think you are starting wlp0s20f3?
There are two steps
1. Get the radio link up
2. Set up the interface as if it was wired.

That will all happen after

[MajorJalepino]

Neddy,

I don't have a clue how to start it, I thought it would happen automatically with these modules being automatically loaded.

wpa_supplicant doesn't actually start the device does it?

Thanks.

[pjp]

What is the output of rc-update and what is the contents of /etc/conf.d/net ?

As an FYI, /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf contains information you don't want publicly visible, so if you ever post it, be sure to edit it. Primarily SSID and key information (maybe more I'm not aware of... that's all I see in mine of concern).
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

[MajorJalepino]

Hi pjp,

Link to output of both those commands: http://dpaste.com/H5MUJGYJH.

Thanks for the heads up about WPA. I've set that file up too with the SSID, password and router addresses for WPA2 when it was working.

[NeddySeagoon]

MajorJalepino,

You have two network interfaces called. enp6s0f1 and wlp0s20f3.

The network setup asks you to create two symbolic links in /etc/init.d/ that point to net.lo.
In your case net.enp6s0f and net.wlp0s20f3
You may have done that.

Both should be added to the default runlevel.

Remove dhcpcd and wpa_supplicant from the default runlevel.
They will be started by net.enp6s0f and/or net.wlp0s20f3.

Now you need an /etc/conf.d/net file.
No entry is required for enp6s0f but you need to invoke wpa_supplicant for net.wlp0s20f3. here.
It should be covered on the wiki or the pages it refers to.

One further wart to be aware of is what needs to happen for the network service to be considered to be up.
Read and possibly edit /etc/rc.conf. See the comment above the line

[MajorJalepino]

Thanks Neddy,

What commands do I need to change around the default runlevels? (rc-update?)

And how do I change the name of wlan0 across the whole system?

How do I create those symbolic links?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT:

So I removed those services from default runlevel and added the new ones: http://dpaste.com/ABRTJR53M

I added these symbolic links to /etc/init.d/: http://dpaste.com/FLGJ26NQE

But still after a reboot that wireless gateway isn't starting/running properly.

Trying to manually start that service: http://dpaste.com/HY6MF95AK

My wpa_supplicant.conf file (cleaned of passwords etc. of course): https://dpaste.com/AQFA9ZLE4

Obligatory dmesg: https://dpaste.com/FPMJ625A8

Thanks in advance.

[jburns]

Is wpa_supplicant built with the tkip USE flag?

[MajorJalepino]

jburns,

No, I haven't set any use flags for specific packages and it's not in my make.conf.

[Hu]

TKIP is deprecated for many years now, and earlier this year, Gentoo changed its default not to include TKIP support in wpa_supplicant. Your cleaned configuration file contains in part:

[MajorJalepino]

Hi Hu,

I just copied this wpa_supplicant.conf file from the wiki. I also have reconfigured the /etc/conf.d/net file to use the correct gateway name and removed TKIP from wpa_supplicant.

Still cannot connect to WiFi.

[jburns]

The problem occurs when wpa_supplicant is built without tkip support but tries to use tkip to access a router that suppports tkip. The solutions are modify the router settings so that it only supports WPA2 or better OR build wpa_supplicant with the tkip USE flag. I could not find any to tell wpa_supplicant not to say it supports tkip when it has been built without tkip support. If you build wpa_supplicant with tkip support the connection to the router will still be made using WPA2.

[pjp]

Verify that you have logging enabled for your wireless interface in conf.d/net (your prior dpaste that included it has expired).

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wpa_supplicant#Enable_logging

I believe all that is needed is the one line that mentions the log file (adjust for your interface and desired logging location):
wpa_supplicant_wlan0="-Dnl80211 -d -f /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log"

Then please retry manually restarting net.wlp0s20f3, then provide its output and the log. Make sure it doesn't contain anything sensitive. I didn't notice anything in mine, but I only looked over it quickly.
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

[MajorJalepino]

Hi pjp,

Logging enabled in conf.d/net, here is the output of the restart:

[pjp]

It seems that wlp0s20f3 isn't working at all, is that correct?

After you see the "Failed to connect to non-global ctrl_ifname" / "failed to start" error, what does ifconfig wlp0s20f3 show?

And we might as well take a look at most other things too. Filter as necessary the output or contents of:

• ls -l /etc/init.d/net.*
  
• rc-update
  
• /etc/conf.d/net
  
• /etc/conf.d/wpa_supplicant
  
• /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
  
• /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log (start with an empty log, then perform the "net.wlp0s20f3 restart" again)

If you're using wgetpaste to upload data, it has a -e option to set the number of days before the upload expires (default is 1). 3 - 7 is probably fine.

I believe /etc/init.d/wpa_supplicant was starting your wlp0s20f3 interface, and switching to using /etc/init.d/net.wlp0s20f3 requires more changes to complete the transition to using that method.

For the record, I happen to use the /etc/init.d/wpa_supplicant method, but I typically see using /etc/init.d/net.* recommended. As I have unresolved wireless problems, and you're trying to resolve a performance problem, trying to get net.wlp0s20f3 working seems worth an attempt.
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

[MajorJalepino]

Thanks for the reply pjp,

Here are the outputs of the commands you needed (in order), they will expire in 7 days.

https://dpaste.com/5TT29CJHB
https://dpaste.com/7THYHYD26
https://dpaste.com/62CWUZRXH
https://dpaste.com/3VCDWLA4A
https://dpaste.com/26M3FJZD8
https://dpaste.com/EZA5MTLMA
https://dpaste.com/HD9TB4YP8
https://dpaste.com/64FMRVZF2

Thanks for any help you may offer. I don't think I've done any setup with init.d/wpa_supplicant, because the wiki tells you to make symbolic links in init.d with net.wlp0sf20f3 to net.lo.

[pjp]

ifconfig wlp0s20f3
Interface exists, looks OK (other than the not working part)


/etc/init.d/net.*
Interfaces look OK


rc-update
shows net.* interfaces started, no dhcp, wpa_supplicant or anything else that looks wrong (to me).


/etc/conf.d/net
looks OK (to me). I have almost the same configuration, but I don't know if using /etc/init.d/net.* to start the network uses the same configuration as using init.d/wpa_supplicant to start it.


/etc/conf.d/wpa_supplicant
looks OK (standard from documentation)


/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

You have 2 ctrl_interface lines.

[MajorJalepino]

Hi all,

I went back through the wpa_supplicant wiki page and followed some commands there.

It seems that I was trying to start a connection with init.d/wpa_supplicant and init.d/wlp0s20f3 at the same time. So I removed the symlinks for the gateways, added dhcpcd and wpa_supplicant to runlevel default and everything works fine.

Thanks for all the help, a great learning experience to be sure. SOLVED.

[NeddySeagoon]

MajorJalepino,

It was all going well until ...