Qubes device has a weak or no internet connection

User Support General
1

I am new to Qubes and my installation of a year suddenly has an internet connection issue. It seems to occurred after I moved places.
Before my Qubes PC was in the same room as the router and connected fine.

After the move my PC is in a separate room from the router and for whatever reason it’s having issues connecting to it. Giving a very weak signal, any attempts to update templates is given internet connection errors.

It is only this device that’s having issues connecting. All other devices (non-qubes OSs) connect to the router seamlessly.
When I try booting with LiveOS such as Tails, I get the same internet connectivity problems.
There’s no way for me to easily move my machine closer to the router to verify and I’d need an extremely long Ethernet cable.

Is this a Qubes issues or something to do with the physical device?

Thanks in advance.

2

It doesn’t sound like a strictly Qubes issue. Could be the drivers. What’s your WiFi card and what driver is in use?

Running sudo lspci -vnn in sys-net will tell you the driver in use (Kernel driver in use: and available (installed) drivers: Kernel modules:). Make sure to look at the section related to your WiFi controller.

3

Hello, sorry for the late response!

My wifi card is Micro-Star and the kernel driver in use is “pciback”. The kernel module is “igc”.

Is there a resource to see what drivers are compatible with the wifi card?

4

Did you run lspci in sys-net or in dom0? pciback would imply that you did that in dom0. If so, please run it in sys-net.

5

Edit: Please disregard, I had a brain fart. I simply forgot to add Terminal as an application in the qube.

The WifiCard is, " Intel Corporarion 700 Series Chipset CNVI WiFi ".

Kernel driver, iwlwifi
Kernel module, iwlwifi

Edit 3: Apparently it’s supported by iwlwifi so I’m confused.

Edit 4: If this information helps,
Sys-net qube is running the Fedora 42 template and the current kernel version is "Linux 6.12.63-1.qubes.fc37.x86_64

Yes, I ran in dom0 because I had issues running a command in sys-net.

There’s two options, Open Terminal in qube and “Run Command” in qube.

The former opens a terminal-like window that says what the sys-net qube is currently doing (in my case, it’s constantly trying to associate to my router but then immediately disassociates. ).
This option does not let me enter any commands.

The latter opens the qube but nothing happens. No pop-up, nothing.

6

To me this sounds like a typical:

“the WiFi signal is too weak after moving the computer”

I’d add a WiFi repeater between computer and access point.

7

My friend has this problem periodically - internet works great, but suddenly speed drops or connection goes out completely. Then he restarts Wi-Fi router and everything works perfectly again. It’s strange, he didn’t have this problems when using regular linux distros like Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora.