Can't enable Wifi

User Support
1

My Qubes can’t connect to Wifi, or rather I can’t even enable Wifi. In the top right corner menu, when I right-click the “Enable Wi-Fi” is not checked, but when I click it, it doesn’t change.

Ethernet network works fine. Wifi used to work but at some point stopped, and I’m not aware of doing anything. Maybe it stopped working after most recent dom0 update, but I’m still on 4.0

Any ideas what could be wrong?

2

Check to see that you have the device attached to sys-net, both in the
qube settings, and with lspci.
Barring a hardware issue, I would look to see that you have drivers
installed to support the specific NIC.
If you look at the boot log you may see entries relating to this.
Without knowing the template you are using in sys-net, whether you have
made any modifications, and what NIC you have installed, it’s hard to
give more detail.

3

Thanks for response. sys-net qube is running, I don’t think I made any modifications to it. It’s based on fedora-31 template. It has two devices atteched:

00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel corporation...
02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros

I believe the Atheros is wifi.

Where can I see boot logs?

4

The fedora-31 template is seriously out of date, and you should replace
it.
You can see boot logs by (e.g) dmesg, or journalctl -b - that’s not
specific to Qubes.

Since you say that WiFi stopped working, I would:

  1. Run iwconfig in sys-net in both Fedora and Debian sys-net.
  2. Switch sys-net to use a Debian template.
  3. Boot from a live distro and check that the Atheros works there.
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum or in the mailing lists I speak for myself.
5

Thank you for the response. I switched sys-net to fedora-33.

Here is the output:

% iwconfig        
ens7      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

vif17.0   no wireless extensions.

wls6      IEEE 802.11  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=off   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
6

What exactly do you mean by “3. Boot from live distro”?

7

Tried to switch sys-net to use debian-10 template, here is the output:

$ /usr/sbin/iwconfig
wls6      IEEE 802.11  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=off   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          
ens7      no wireless extensions.

vif21.0   no wireless extensions.

vif23.0   no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.
8

Omg. I just noticed that in the menu, it says “Wifi disabled by hardware switch”. On Lenovo X230, there is a hardware toggle on left side. Now it’s working fine. :man_facepalming:

1 Like
9

Happens to the best of us. Glad you figured it out!!!