5 stages of failing WIFI connectivity on Linux

This morning I woke up my laptop to start my work day. I have 2 very important meetings today, so I better get all prepared.

"Wifi connection failed"
Syslog says:
- wpa_supplicant: wlp9s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with <MAC>
- kernel: wlp9s0: authenticate with <MAC>
- kernel: wl9s0: send auth to <MAC> (try 1/3)
- kernel: wl9s0: send auth to <MAC> (try 2/3)
- kernel: iwlwifi: Not associated and the session protection is over already...
- kernel: wl9s0: send auth to <MAC> (try 3/3)
- kernel: wl9s0: authentication with <MAC> timed out

#### DENIAL #####

No biggie, let's try another AP (I have 3). All 3 failed to connect. Fine, let's try my phone's hotspot! FAILED!!!!!

w00t.... okay, let's restart the router... but failing to connect to a phone hotspot is already a worrying sign.

Wifi connection failed

wtf.. disable and re-enable wifi

Wifi connection failed

#### ANGER #####

the fuuuuuuck. Maybe my router is dead. But my phone connects to it, no fuss. My personal lappy also connects there easily.

wtf... Does that mean I'm about to lose my uptime?? Come one!! It's Linux - there MUST be something I could do! I don't see processes hanging in D state so the radio must be fine - it's gotta be a software issue!

ChatGPT – type all the log entries manually, via phone (that took a while...). Nothing useful there: update firmware, restart NetworkManager, etc.

#### BARGAINING #####

Alright... How about a USB dongle? Plug it in and wifi connects immediately! Yayyy!!! But that's only b/g/n and I'd very much like to have ac. It works well as a limping backup, but not something I'd use for the meetings.

rfkill block/unblock all the radios. No change. USB dongle connects right away but the PCIe adapter keeps throwing notifications at me with failure messages. It's annoying, to say the least.

So I've already tried
- restarting the router(s)
- disabling/reenabling the radios
- multiple APs
- suspending/waking again several times
- praying

#### DEPRESSION #####

The only thing I haven't tried yet is the most cruel one - restarting the laptop. But that's unfair... It's LINUX! How could it disappoint me. I have so many tmux sessions open, so many unsaved leafpad notes, terminal histories with oh so comfy ^r and ! retriggers all ready and waiting to be executed...

#### ACCEPTANCE #####

But I can't miss the meeting. So I slowly start closing off apps, starting with the least important ones, trying to preserve as much history and recent commands as I can. I'm gonna lose my uptime, that's the inevitable obvious truth... Linux has failed me. Or maybe it's a hardware issue... I can't be sure until I restart.

I must reboot.

#### A NEW HOPE #####
Hold on.. What if... What if before restarting I try to reload the Intel wifi kernel module? Just for the giggles. I've got nothing to lose anyway...

rmmod iwlmvm
rmmod iwlwifi
modprobe iwlwifi
modprobe iwlmvm

*WiFi Connected*

YESSSS!!!!!!!!! My uptime is saved!
403 days and counting! YEAH BABY!!!

Linux is the best!

I am great at getting raspberry pi projects about 97% done...

But absolute shit at that last 3%.

Working on a home built WiFi repeater and deauther (front) and a 1TB SSD nextcloudpi server (back). Definitely outside my comfort zone, especially the first one. Despite having mad time on terminal, and SSH every day, I am very soft on this networking shit.

wpa_supplicant, though I do not now, I will come to understand your mysteries.

Idiot award goes to me. Trying to connect to my WiFi Tried to install wpa_supplicant. No other Internet connection

I am going to stab a brick wall. I am at my university trying to install Arch Linux, but the connection is WPA-EAP and wifi-menu does not work. I need it installed by class tomorrow or else I'll have to use Windows. I don't understand how to set up a wpa_supplicant file. I'm sure it's simple for PSK's... But I don't know what to put for "eap" Linux is making me so pissed today. (but I still love her) I am really done with this

I learned today. I do not know how to connect to an open wifi network from the terminal. I was with some friends in a public place and I was gonna connect to their wifi, but I was at a standstill. I've only ever used wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd to connect to a wifi network manually, so I just..never had to learn any other method of doing it.

I know I really should figure it out at some point, but I'm kinda lazy and it's never come up before.

How many hours does it take to get your configfiles right?
First .zshrc, then .vimrc, tmux, weechat, wpa_supplicant, grub... so much config.
But that's sort of the fun of it all

it just dawned on me I could modify the fs on my arch installation usb.

i could include the passphrase for the wifi I'll be using, and a script that runs:
* wpa_supplicant and dhclient
* setfont for a bigger font (so i can see shit)
* most of the install commands that i rarely customize
* installs all my dotfiles on the target partition

i am trying out different configs for my laptop that has shitty optimus (like which one draws more power using powertop).

so i would appreciate testing these things from scratch, and automating the install helps with that

Spent all day trying to fix my intermittently failing Wi-Fi connection on Linux. Error codes for wpa_supplicant are entirely unhelpful. -_-

Iwd. IWD. iNetWirelessDaemon. Where have you been? No lag at all. Fast. No dependencies. Lightweight. No layers of abstractions...

Since I switched to Arch on my my computer (4 years ago!), I've had to deal with NetworkManager. What a piece of shit. Don't get me started about wpa_supplicant, the piece of software that did the real lifting.

Thanks, Intel!

Ok so that's my plan, find a kernel with HUGE amout of drivers and , high version.

I built a small os based on linux
-- kernel version 5.0.2 from Plop Linux,
many libraries added 'by hand' -- packages from apts of Debian&Ubuntu, and unpacked packages into system with ArchiveManager,
has GUI but it's called xfree86 ( looks strange when a very old app running on Kernel5 )
So, without compiling, i can make a os.

But i found that Plop didn't compile rtl8188eu module which makes linux support some specific network cards.

I have no professional compiler but a tiny C/Cpp compiler called TinyCC (aka. tcc), but for my pc ( CPU freq = 800MHz ), it seems not possible to compile the module by myself.

And then i downloaded a 5.2 kernel with modules from kernel.ubuntu.com, but when i tried to mount my disk ( part. vfat ), i got some errors like IO charset not found, and then i replaced it with Xanmod kernel but also reported an error said Invalid Arguments, but i checked /proc/filesystems, it supports.

So what can i do? Are there any pre-compiled kernel & modules with 'full common supports'?

I tried kernel 4.4 ( from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS ) just now but the driver crashed when wpa_supplicant tried to initialize the device.