Q4OS Forum

rbergman18

Member

Registered: 2021-02-13

Posts: 4

Yet another wifi dilemma...

Trying out a clean install of Q4OS Centaurus/Trinity 32bit on a very old Gateway laptop with a Realtek 8185 WLAN PCI adapter (for a friend recently laid off). It installs and appears to run very well... wifi is good... UNTIL...

I run (as root) apt update && apt full-upgrade. Having made no other changes. A typical first step when installing a new system.

Once the system reboots, the card is recognized by the system (inxi -F) and network manager (which reports it as "disconnected"). The driver is loaded (lsmod). rfkill reports it's unblocked x2. But no SSIDs appear in Network Manager, via the gui, via "nmcli d wifi list", etc. Previously connected-to SSID can not be found any longer. Ethernet works fine.

rbergman18

Member

Registered: 2021-02-13

Posts: 4

Re: Yet another wifi dilemma...

This last install (I've been at this a while now) I upgraded only xserver*, unzip, udev, tzdata, sudo, openssl, python*, grub*, apt* and base-files... but still no WiFi on reboot.

rbergman18

Member

Registered: 2021-02-13

Posts: 4

Re: Yet another wifi dilemma...

And then, after throwing in the towel and telling my friend it'll have to be Ethernet, I shut the system down, gave it a good cleaning, removed the battery and all, and went to bed. Woke this morning and thought "I'll give it one more go, bypassing NM and using wpa_supplicant." When I powered it on and booted up, WiFi is working perfectly.

Will wonders never cease. I hate computers! :-D

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,333

Re: Yet another wifi dilemma...

It was probably just a bit exhausted - these old computers need their rest too

rbergman18

Member

Registered: 2021-02-13

Posts: 4

Re: Yet another wifi dilemma...

Yes, indeed! I suppose it should have occurred to me that older hardware REALLY might want to be power cycled after upgrade as opposed to simply rebooted.