Wifi connection locking up - Mint 18.3 laptop

[rans6andrew]

I installed Linux Mint 18.3 onto an old laptop PC which had some serious issues with the original Win OS, I forget which version, the machine was gifted to me to play with. The installation went smoothly and, after increasing the ram to 4GB ran acceptably if not blindingly quickly. In use it wakes up and runs as expected, logging onto any of our Wifi routers and happily running Firefox but, after some time it loses the Wifi link. Hovering over the Wifi icon in the task bar shows the Wifi signal strength high, sometimes higher than it is when it is working, sometimes up at 100%. When working normally the signal strength is typically 85%. When it locks out the machine's other functions seem to be OK and if the ethernet cable is connected to the router, the internet browsing is resumed. The Wifi connection can only be restored by rebooting the whole machine, nudging the network connections by changing which router to connect wirelessly doesn't force reconnection. Refreshing the available routers list doesn't work. The problem occurs on 2.4GHz and 5Ghz Wifi connections.

Is there an easy way to determine if the problem is in the hardware or in the driver software? I didn't use the machine before the OS change so have no idea if the machine lost the Wifi before.

Thanks,

Rans6....................

[Jhieminga]

One way to narrow it down would be to use a USB Wifi adapter for a bit. If it runs ok on that, your laptop hardware or software is still suspect of course, but if you get the same dropping out behaviour, there is something suspicious in your software installation that is unrelated to the Wifi driver. You could try putting an old Windows OS (or another Linux distribution) back on the laptop to see if it runs fine on that, as that would eliminate the hardware as a suspect. If it had issues with the Windows installation, were any of those issues perhaps Wifi related?

[le Pingouin]

Or try a live Linux USB maybe.

[rans6andrew]

Thanks Jhieminga, good suggestion. I plugged in a USB WiFi dongle and enabled it in the network manager, disabling the built in Wifi at the same time. After not very long the network connection locked out pointing to an issue with the driver software in the OS. Some Googling found other folk with a similar issue a few versions of Mint ago with the suggestion that the network manager and power manager (it is a laptop) don't always work together as desired. One of the suggested fixes is to open a terminal window and to type in a few lines, given, to change the settings but when I did it asked for a password for github that I don't know. Still checking down that route.

Rans6........

[netstruggler]

Originally Posted by rans6andrew

I installed Linux Mint 18.3 onto an old laptop PC which had some serious issues with the original Win OS, I forget which version, the machine was gifted to me to play with. The installation went smoothly and, after increasing the ram to 4GB ran acceptably if not blindingly quickly. In use it wakes up and runs as expected, logging onto any of our Wifi routers and happily running Firefox but, after some time it loses the Wifi link. Hovering over the Wifi icon in the task bar shows the Wifi signal strength high, sometimes higher than it is when it is working, sometimes up at 100%. When working normally the signal strength is typically 85%. When it locks out the machine's other functions seem to be OK and if the ethernet cable is connected to the router, the internet browsing is resumed. The Wifi connection can only be restored by rebooting the whole machine, nudging the network connections by changing which router to connect wirelessly doesn't force reconnection. Refreshing the available routers list doesn't work. The problem occurs on 2.4GHz and 5Ghz Wifi connections.

Is there an easy way to determine if the problem is in the hardware or in the driver software? I didn't use the machine before the OS change so have no idea if the machine lost the Wifi before.

Thanks,

Rans6....................

Generally I do:

Step 1 On Linux run ifconfig in a terminal shell (ipconfig in a command shell in Windows land) to see if the WiFi interface is still up and has plausible settings.
Step 2 ping your WiFi router to see if you have a link as far as the router
Step 3 ping an external IP address directly (for example 8.8.4.4) to see if you have a link to the internet
Step 4 ping a hostname (for example www.bbc.com) to see if your DNS configuration is working.

Further steps depend on how far you get with the above.

When using WiFi do you disable the wired Ethernet adaptor? You shouldn't need to, but I've known it make a difference.

HTH

[rans6andrew]

I have tried all of the suggestions netstruggler, some time ago. All suggested a complete loss of connection. It doesn't make any difference if the ethernet wired connection is enable or not but if it is enabled (either before the wifi drops connection or after) and a cable is connected the internet access is resumed from where it was when it stopped. The browser doesn't need anything beyond F5 to reload page.

Last evening I followed a few threads in fora relating to the problem I see and tried opening a terminal window and doing:

sudo sed -i 's/3/2/' /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/*

and then reboot the machine.

I have not figured out what it is changing, I will do "man" to figure it out but it does seem to have improved the situation, the machine has been on for some hours and the connection has stayed up. Finger crossed.

Rans6........

[Saab Dastard]

sudo sed -i 's/3/2/' /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/*

and then reboot the machine.

I have not figured out what it is changing,

It turned off wifi powersave.

SD

[rans6andrew]

I guessed it was something like that but I failed to find any "Man" entries relating to this. No explanation as to the meaning of 2 or 3 in this context.......

Happy that the machine seems to be fixed now though,

Thanks for trying.

Rans6...........

[netstruggler]

Originally Posted by rans6andrew

I guessed it was something like that but I failed to find any "Man" entries relating to this. No explanation as to the meaning of 2 or 3 in this context.......

Rans6...........

It's substituting the 3 with a 2, which is the correct thing to do in the wifi powersave config file. How to turn off wifi power management

However it seems to be acting on all files in the conf.d directory (conf.d/*), which sounds a bit dodgy as it could have unintended consequences if there are other files in there.

However, if it's working, maybe best to leave well alone.