Member Avatar for Curious Gorge

So this is a new installation of Fedora. I'd not used Fedora in many months prior to this point. I had Fedora 25. However the Wifi on this machine is quite troublesome.

There are times when the connection will stop completely. I will try to load a webpage and the connection just dropped. It tries to reconnect but sometimes it doesn't even show nearby Wifi APs.

It just keeps cycling and never shows anything. I am very frustrated.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by rproffitt

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Brief, practical guidance and a focused troubleshooting path. observed intermittent Wi‑Fi on a fresh Fedora 26 install; updates helped briefly and the problem returned. offered a pragmatic hardware workaround (USB Wi‑adapter) — a valid short‑term fix. Below are targeted diagnostics and low-risk steps to find the root cause or stabilize the link.

Collect these diagnostics first to identify driver/firmware and runtime errors:

lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 network
lsusb
iw dev
nmcli device status
rfkill list all
uname -r
sudo journalctl -b -u NetworkManager --no-pager | tail -n 200
sudo dmesg | tail -n 200

How to read and act on the results:

  • Confirm which kernel module is handling the card (look for "Kernel driver in use" from lspci). If the wrong or no driver is loaded, that points to a driver/firmware mismatch.
  • Scan the logs (journalctl and dmesg) for repeated errors, firmware load failures, or warnings when the drop happens; note timestamps to correlate events.
  • Test power-management as a common culprit: turn it off temporarily and see if stability improves. Try reloading the module with different parameters to test alternate modes (use the commands below carefully; replace <driver> and wlan0 as appropriate).
# temporary tests (replace <driver> and wlan0)
sudo modprobe -r <driver> && sudo modprobe <driver> option=value
sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save off
# to persist a module option:
echo "options <driver> option=value" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/wifi.conf

Other practical notes: test from a Live USB or a different kernel to see if the issue is a regression; if a USB dongle fixes it, disable the onboard device to avoid conflicts (as did). If you plan to file a bug, include lspci -nnk, lsusb, uname -r, and the NetworkManager/dmesg extracts. These items make reports actionable and speed a proper fix.

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

That's one deep rabbit hole. Read and think over the discussion at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1409631

Notice this?

Some HP notebooks using this rtl8188ee hardware module can't get AP scan results with pin-based interrupts mode, enabling MSI interrupts mode could fix it.

Now you might complain that this isn't exactly your version but go down that rabbit hole to find that make, model of the PC and WiFi hardware is needed to see if anyone has a fix.

Hope you remembered to plot a return path to the surface.

Member Avatar for Curious Gorge

Hmmm... I just installed some updates after connecting via ethernet. The Wifi seems to be working now. Will check back if the problems persists.

Edited by Curious Gorge
commented: Thanks for the check in. Always nice to read updates. +12
Member Avatar for Curious Gorge

So its been a few days... the WiFi seems intermittent again. I have indeed checked out the link you sent me and tried the solution but it doesn't seem to work. I then tried comment #27's solution, some command with tcdump which printed out almost exactly what comment #37 got.

I'm not sure where to go from here...

Member Avatar for rproffitt

Here's my exit. Not that I'm abandoning you but want to share how I fixed a machine with WiFi support issues when I couldn't change to another distro. FIX! I plugged in another WiFi USB stick and that worked. I disabled the onboard and moved to the next problem.

Now I understand some may gripe about such a fix but here these sticks are from 8 to 20ish bucks and plentiful. Here is the USA and Amazon is quick to deliver so I have that going for me.

Member Avatar for Curious Gorge

Oh yeah, I'd thought of that. I have only 3 usb ports on this machine, one of which is always in use by a unifying receiver for my mouse. It would be nice to avoid plugging in another device leaving just one port for anything else that I need. I have an extra usb dongle lying around, I may try that. Its pretty frustrating that the Fedora crew can't fix this bug. I don't want to toss around insults but to call yourself state of the art and this bug exists for 6 versions??? Come on.

Member Avatar for rproffitt

Toss away.... Anyhow, one of the reasons for Linux is open source. There are new to Linux folk that think that all bugs shall be fixed by the company or group. This is not how it works. You either report the bug and hope someone nails it or dig in yourself to fix it and if you fix it contribute to the effort.

I've never had the time to dig in and fix more than say a configuration file to get something to work or contribute hardware to a developer but my point here is that Linux is different from Windows when it comes to bugs like this.

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