wireless networking - Unable to Find WiFi Interface on Arch Linux

07
2014-07
  • clifgray

    I am running Arch on VMWare and I am unable to find a WiFi interface.

    When I run ip link I get: enter image description here

    When I try to ping www.google.com it says that it is an unknown host but when I ping 0.0.0.0 I get a response.

    I have the Google DNS Servers on my resolv.conf file right now 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

    And that makes no difference from not even having a nameserver on there.

    I have wifi on the VMWare instance, when I go to Network Adapter on the VMWare Player it shows me that it is good to go. I'm not sure what else to check. I am not wired yet I am able to ping IP addresses yet no wireless interface is showing.

    Any advice?

    • Answers
  • glallen

    Run ls /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf and you will see some variation of: all default eth0 lo wlan0. You can grep for these same interfaces in dmesg for more information regarding what your kernel/modules see regarding your hardware.

    If all you see is all, default, eth0 and lo. Then you do not have a wlan0 device loaded regardless of vm or hardware system. By loaded, I mean it exists, and the kernel modules are loaded for it. If you see an ethX interface, that is your wired network interface. You will configure this as if you were configuring a normal wired ethernet port. For instance, for eth0, to first check the IP:

    ip address show eth0
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:11:22:33:44:55 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 172.20.50.94/20 brd 172.20.63.255 scope global eth0
   valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

    If you do not see state UP you will need to run ip link set dev eth0 up

    If no address is visible, then either configure according to you distro's documentation, configure with DHCP, dhclient eth0 or configure the ip address and route manually. Since you are using a bridged virtual interface to wifi, you should only need to use DHCP, and your wifi router will provide an address.

    To manually configure and interface however, you would do this:

    ip address add <address>/<cidr> dev eth0
ip route add default dev eth0
echo "nameserver <dns-ip>" > /etc/resolv.conf

    And verify with:

    ip address show
ip route show
dig <domain name>

    For additional assistance, see the man-pages for ip resolv.conf


    • Related Question

    wireless networking - Arch Linux drops me on my school network
  • Kravlin

    I'm running a Lenovo X61 which I carry around my college for getting on the internet at various points in the day. The network has always been finicky but recently it's gotten worse. I'll connect using iwconfig, get an IP from dhcpcd and log in using vpnc to their system. Sometimes I'll stay connected for hours but most of the time within 30 seconds my network traffic will drop to zero and I'll be unable to do anything

    My computer still believes it's connected, however to try again I need to put my wireless interface down, put it back up and try again. It's gotten so bad that I've got a window on my computer pinging Yahoo or Google constantly in order to know if I'm still able to get online.

    I know other people who have used Arch Linux that don't have the same problems as well as people who use Ubuntu who haven't had any problems either. It seems like my computer is a special case. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix it? dmesg doesn't show anything out of the ordinary going on and I don't know where else to look for errors or other things to try.

    Edit: this doesn't happen on my home network. It's a problem that only happens at school.


    • Related Answers
  • Marnix A. van Ammers

    This may not help, but I thought I'd let you know. My z61m thinkpad has the same problem, but only with one of my two access points at home. It just started happening out of the blue. It had been working fine with both access points for about 6 months. It has the identical problem in either windows, linux, or OpenSolaris. Both access points are made by D-Link, but they are different models. For that z61m laptop, I've simply been using the access point that still works OK. I suspect the wifi card in the laptop but I haven't proven that.

  • dag729

    I would take a look to the power management: I suppose that when the pc goes idle, many softwares and devices could stop working (I noticed that behaviour on my machines running Ubuntu 9.04 and ArchLinux); I meant, try to disable all the power saving features from your OSes, and see if it happens again.

    Just my 2 cents.

  • Perkins

    Make sure you drop by your university's local help desk or equivalent (if there is one). It may not be a problem with just your laptop, and they might not know about it. Even if it is just a problem with your laptop, they might be able to give a clue (software update on their end or something) about what caused it or ideas to try to fix it. What is causing it (and what to do to fix it) depends a lot on the wireless system used and other technical details that are hard to suss out remotely.

  • Alec

    I have had this problem with my laptop running Fedora. I found that the default drivers (not that Arch has default wireless drivers) didn't work at all. I don't know a lot about Arch, but I would check the AUR for the newest drivers possible for your wireless chip. I upgraded/changed my wireless driver in Fedora (which used to drop every 10 mins), but now I have perfect connectivity.

  • Brian Knoblauch

    Same problem here with a Lenovo/IBM Thinkpad R50. Randomly drops off my home wifi network (but has never done it on any other network and other machines at home don't have the problem). Status LED goes out, no more wifi. I have to either reboot or disable/enable it through Windows. Flipping the hardware switch doesn't reset it. Doesn't seem to matter if it's idle or busy. The Lenovo/IBM software thinks it's still connected and a disconnect/reconnect through that software doesn't do any good.