Wifi Card turns off in Linux

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MikeB4

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#239469 19-Jul-2018 18:57

i have a dual boot machine with Win 10 and Mint installed. When in Windows the wifi nic is working fine. When I boot into Mint the Wifi Card turns off and will not stay turned off. I set it on, try and connect and the nic turns off again. If I then reboot into Windows 10 the Wifi nic remains in teh turned off stae and I have to re activate it in device manager.

I tried a live boot of Ubuntu 18.04 and I am experiencing the same issue. The wifi had been working fine up until recently, I have never come across this before and I am at a loss. Wire ethernet is fine and connects at 900mbps

Could this be an interference issue?

openmedia

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#2059144 20-Jul-2018 08:09

Cab you confirm the chipset for the Wifi?

Under Linux type the following and provide the output

sudo lspci

sudo lsusb

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

MikeB4

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#2059239 20-Jul-2018 11:01

@openmedia

The ethernet = RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI express Gigabit ethernet controller Rev 01

The Wifi = BCM 42142 802.11 b/g/n Rev 01

The Wifi has worked fine for a long time on various Distro such as Mint 18.x, Fedora 27, Ubuntu 17.04, 17.10 and 18.04, Kubuntu 18.04 plus others over the years. The card works on Win 10 fine once it turns on. I have turned off all sleep modes on the card and have wake on lan turned on.

MikeB4

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#2059361 20-Jul-2018 15:24

I am not even going to try and guess how this worked, I had an idea that connecting the PC via ethernet might help. I found a loooooong cat 6 lead and connected the PC to the Orbi satellite by ethernet. Until then the Wifi connection was dead, I connected to the LAN and the ethernet provided a good connection. I then attempted to connect via Wifi and voila it worked. I had made no further changes to the Broadcom drivers being used and changed no settings.

I then booted into Windows and all is OK. Then again I rebooted into Linux and the Wifi is now working correctly. Go figure, I have no idea why that would fix it.

gzt

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#2059591 20-Jul-2018 19:09

Ifconfig can be useful to enable and disable interfaces.

I will guess one of the configs or network managers has the interface confused. Don't ask me where or how ; ).

amiga500

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#2059688 20-Jul-2018 22:10

Glad you have it working again. Hearing about things suddenly not working in Linux makes me nervous!

MikeB4

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#2059758 21-Jul-2018 08:17

amiga500:
Glad you have it working again. Hearing about things suddenly not working in Linux makes me nervous!

I will check it again this morning but I may throw a new Wireless NIC into it, I have been intending to boost the Wifi to AC for a while just never felt motivated to do so.

MikeB4

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#2062961 26-Jul-2018 13:44

I installed an ASUS AC Wifi card which has an Intel chipset and all is well. Thanks heaps for the tip @michaelmurfy