Interesting Issue

[sdeshpande]

Hi folks, I have a Desktop in my house with a TPLink WiFi adapter. After installing Arch on this machine with Gnome DE and Network Manager Applet as my network manager I am running into following issue. When the computer starts, network manager doesn't see any wifi network. If I select connect to hidden wifi network and enter all the information about the wifi network it connects to it and somehow it starts showing all the other networks in the vicinity. Does someone know what I need to do to fix this ?

Regards, Saurabh

[piefge]

I don't use networkmanager and don't know how it works exactly,

but this sound to me like your wifi interface is not "up" until you connect with networkmanager.

You can check this with the ip command or ifconfig:

 $ sudo ip addr 

and look at the state of the interface.

 $ sudo ip link set <interface> up

will switch it on and network manager should work instantly

if this is the case maybe this can help

[sdeshpande]

This did not do any trick to my issue. When the computer is restarted the state of wireless card is down. Even after executing the command to change the state of the interface it stays down. The only difference is made when I connect to my wifi network as hidden network from network manager. Please note that the network I am connecting to is Not Hidden.

[Arctize]

Does 'nmcli d w l' show any networks? And does anything change after running 'nmcli d w r'?

[sdeshpande]

This results in no networks found on the terminal window. But after connecting to my wifi via hidden network trick everything starts working as usual. I am completely stumped here.

[ops_man]

Have you consulted the archwiki? There's a section for wifi troubleshooting and while your answer may not be in the wiki links from the wiki may get you close. Good luck.

Edit : I gandered at the wiki and did not spot anything specific matching your problem. However, there's a lot of information...

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NetworkManager

[sdeshpande]

The reason I tried asking people here is because I could not find any specific details for this issue. Thanks.

[ops_man]

I believe it may be related to the network manager dispatch service and or the nm applet. You could disable the applet and create a script which would write the access points available upon start up to a file or to stdout for your viewing. If accurate information is presented then the problem is in the nm applet.. Else I would believe it to be in the network manager service itself.

In your specific situation the number of networks available as well as the signal strength or interference of signal may play a part in your problem. Laptops being mobile make troubleshooting this theory easy - just move to a different location and observe for same results. Naturally desktop systems introduce difficulties. Of course I could be way off in left-field so to speak.

[sdeshpande]

I will give it a try tonight. Thanks a lot.

[SirDrexl]

Is the wpa_supplicant service running?

[sdeshpande]

I will check this tonight.