wifi icon has question mark in it even though network is fine

[Jonathan Kamens]

After experiencing some "turbulence" in my wifi (I rebooted my primary wifi router, which caused my laptop to fallback onto a secondary access point which didn't have full connectivity until the primary router finished rebooting, then I rebooted the primary router a second time), the wifi icon in my top bar stayed as the question-mark icon (i.e., the icon that shows when Network Manager doesn't think you have full connectivity) even after everything was back up and in fact my connectivity was fine.

Turning wifi off and back on did not cause the question mark to go away. Restarting Network Manager did not cause the question mark to go away. Switching to a different wifi network and then back to the previous one didn't cause the question mark to go away. I had to reboot my laptop to get the question mark to go away.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.10
Package: network-manager 1.20.2-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-10.11-generic 5.3.0-rc8
Uname: Linux 5.3.0-10-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Sep 21 18:35:48 2019
IfupdownConfig:
 # interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-09-12 (9 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" - Release amd64 (20190416)
IpRoute:
 default via 192.168.4.1 dev wlp0s20f3 proto dhcp metric 600
 169.254.0.0/16 dev wlp0s20f3 scope link metric 1000
 192.168.4.0/24 dev wlp0s20f3 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.4.103 metric 600
NetworkManager.state:
 [main]
 NetworkingEnabled=true
 WirelessEnabled=true
 WWANEnabled=true
SourcePackage: network-manager
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to eoan on 2019-09-20 (1 days ago)
nmcli-nm:
 RUNNING VERSION STATE STARTUP CONNECTIVITY NETWORKING WIFI-HW WIFI WWAN-HW WWAN
 running 1.20.2 connected started full enabled enabled enabled enabled enabled

[Heather Ellsworth (hellsworth)]

Since upgrading to kinetic, I see this daily. My network connectivity seems fine but yet the question mark appears in the wifi icon. Randomly the question mark will go away, leaving a normal wifi indicator showing connectivity, and then it will come back. There is no visible change in the network in that my video meeting connection seems unwavering.

While this initial bug is based on 19.10, I have only started seeing it since upgrading 22.04->22.10.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

I'm seeing that too in kinetic. FWIW, it's not wireless-specific. I'm on a wired connection with wifi turned off, and seeing the question mark too.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could you check what's the output of

$ nmcli networking connectivity check

while you see the issue?

do you get the problem while using a VPN to only access some resources?

if so it might be fixed with https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/-/commit/e6dac4f0

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

jik@framework1l:~$ nmcli networking connectivity check
portal
jik@framework1l:~$

I'm not using a VPN.

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

Interestingly, the wifi icon is currently flapping back and forth between the question mark and the fully connected symbol every few seconds. If I run nmcli networking connection check in a loop it switches to "full" when the fully connected symbol is showing and "portal" when the question mark is showing.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

There was some issues with the connectivity server returning inconsistent statuses, that has been fixed now, could you check if that resolves the flaky indicator issue for you maybe?