Re: Can't reconnect to WiFi easily

[Luis Felipe]

Hi Felix,


On Saturday, October 22nd, 2022 at 00:23, Felix Lechner 
<felix.lechner@lease-up.com> wrote:

> I use a non-free kernel. The Wifi drops very rarely if at all; once a
> week at most. My remedy in Gnome 3 is to disable the Wifi and to
> re-enable it again. I never restart the Shepherd service.

I only use Guix's official channel, so I have linux-libre. Disabling the WiFi 
does not work for me when connection is lost. That part of the GUI hangs. So, 
if I click on the top-right widget in GNOME Shell, click on the currently 
active network, and then try to turn it off, nothing happens, it remains on, 
and the GUI doesn't change state. The same happens if I try to turn it off from 
GNOME Settings, I can't switch off.


> Your problems could be related to recent linux-libre updates such as
> commit 92a71b46. Which kernel do you use currently?

linux-libre 5.19.16-gnu


> > I know WiFi networks are not that stable, but my system/machine
> > seems to be the only one that can't recover from connection failure.
> 

> 

> The output of 'lsusb' or 'lspci' might tell readers more about your
> Wifi endpoint.

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 
PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)
02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network 
Adapter (rev 01)


> It's also possible your central equipment is failing, although that
> seems less likely. Last year, I replaced a flaky Cisco E2500 that had
> run well under OpenWRT for ten years. It started disconnecting in the
> summers, when it got hot. Maybe you are in the Southern hemisphere. Is
> everyone using 5 GHz or are you still on 2.5GHz while the other folks
> have upgraded?

The central equipment is owned and managed by the ISP (is a Technicolor 
Gateway, several years old).

The connection details in the Guix machine and a Debian machine say:
__________
Signal Strenght: Good
Link Speed: 26-57 MB/s (2.4 GHz)
Supported Frequences: 2.4 GHz
‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾
An Android says 65 MB/s (2.4 GHz), other Androids don't display the frequency.

(Checking for the details of the WiFi connection in GNOME Settings, I noticed 
that the option "Make available to other users" is activated, which I would not 
expect to be on by default, but I'm pretty much new to WiFi, I've always used a 
UTP cable until recently).


> Since you are using Gnome, I should point out that I see some strange
> behaviour from GDM, or perhaps elogind. All my NFS clients and servers
> will block any NFS traffic after about 20 minutes when GDM is active.
> I usually try to switch to a virtual console but when I forget, a
> reboot is my sole remedy.
> 

> > I see no other option but rebooting. But that also fails.
> > For example, when I tell GNOME to reboot, the process
> > hangs in a black screen
> 

> 

> Do you use or did you recently enable any suspension features? Some
> Wifi cards do not wake up properly and require a reload of the kernel
> module. You can try unloading manually with 'modprobe -r'.

No, I don't use suspension. But I'll try "modprobe" next time. Is the module 
name the same as the driver name (the latter is driver=ath9k in my case)?

Thanks,

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