Linux Lite Forums
Hardware - Support => Network => Topic started by: Vera on June 20, 2018, 01:14:10 PM
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Hi, I'm having occasional intermittent Wi-Fi issues on the laptop that I installed LL 4.0. It occasionally says it can't reach a website (like the message you get if wi-fi is not available) but when I hit reload on that same page, the page loads fine the second time around. I never had those problems previously on LL 3.8 for this same laptop, or currently on my main machine on 3.8.
Initially I assumed the outages was due to our Wi-Fi going out, but that hasn't been the case - I've had no problems with internet on my main machine. So here is my question:
For troubleshooting purposes, is there a command that I can use to output the Internet/Wi-Fi settings on either of my machines so I can see at a glance what these settings currently are? I'd like to run this command on both my machines (the LL 4.0 laptop where I'm currently experiencing issues vs the LL 3.8 machine that is doing fine). They are both on the same Wi-Fi, so it might help if I can see what the difference is in set-up/settings. I tried the man pages for ip-related commands but it wasn't clear to me which one(s) I'd need. Any help would be much appreciated thanks.
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sudo ifconfig
Should show if your interface is up and what it is connected to.
I have noticed the same thing on a new installation, but on reboots all is okay. Not sure why yet.
TC
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Thanks so much @trinidad for this info. I compared ifconfig for both of my machines (the 3.8 one that's working fine and the 4.0 one with the intermittent issues). I didn't find anything that looked like it would be the problem.
I also found the man pages on the related command iwconfig and did that for both machines and again I'm not seeing anything obviously wrong.
In the hope that it may be an odd bug that is fixed in updates, I decided to do updates on 4.0 (I'd kept it up to date but there were new updates available so I did that). Because the Wi-Fi issue is very intermittent, I'll have to keep an eye on it for awhile to see if the problem is fixed or not.
It's been a little frustrating because it's not happening so often as to be able to notice it every time I'm working on the computer, but it's happening often enough that I don't want to do anything like internet banking or making any purchases using that machine (in case connection drops in middle of a transaction).
So, for now I will keep an eye on things and see if the udpates happened to fix anything. If you or anyone else has more suggestions I am open to that too.
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I thought it was curious behavior, as it seems to resolve upon reboot. I'm guessing it's a typical Firefox thing with the typical fix. Make sure you have selected Firefox as your default browser both in Firefox preferences and in LL Settings> default applications. I believe it's caused by the firewall (GUFW) not recognizing Firefox after Firefox updates. That is why it works again after a reboot. Sometimes Firefox updates without expecting reboots, (without informing you that a reboot is necessary) the way it normally does after kernel updates. Perhaps this reboot notification needs to be added to the LL updater for Firefox updates.
Also this version of Firefox is capable of updating to recognize new versions of web code, adding as needed. Perhaps those on the fly changes are effecting firewall recognition of the browser as well.
TC
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Oh thank you for your new response, @trinidad - it's been great to get more info about that. FYI I am not using Firefox. It IS technically set as my default browser, but the browser I always use day-to-day is Vivaldi.
No, I didn't have the issue on this same machine when I used Vivaldi back on LL 3.8. I'm also not getting problems with Vivaldi now on my other machine that is still on 3.8. I keep up to date with updating both machines. So I'm doubtful that Vivaldi is the issue (although it still could be I guess, if it was somehow not-so-compatible with LL 4.0). Still, I'm suspecting some other issue.
The Wi-Fi issue resolves itself on reloading the web page (without me needing to re-connect to the Wi-Fi or anything like that), and it has occurred more than once during a work session. I've also had it happen after reboot - being a laptop, I usually do a shut-down when I'm not using it, or at the end of the day at the very least, so it's had plenty of chances at reboots.
The good news at the moment: so far today I haven't had it happen yet, which is a first for me since installing LL 4.0. Then again, I haven't used the laptop much today as I had sensitive stuff like banking etc to do where I used my other machine to be certain the connection won't drop. I'm back on the laptop now though, and it's doing OK so far. Will continue to keep an eye on it.