Wifi icon becomes a white square when connection lost.

[Charlie]

When my laptop has been idle for a little while, somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour, my wifi connection will drop and disappear and a small white box will present where the name of my connection should in the window for connections, battery percentage/time, etc. I'm attaching screen grabs for analysis.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.24.3-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.12.0-11.12-generic 4.12.5
Uname: Linux 4.12.0-11-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.6-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Sat Aug 12 16:00:39 2017
DisplayManager: gdm3
GsettingsChanges:
 b'org.gnome.shell' b'app-picker-view' b'uint32 1'
 b'org.gnome.shell' b'favorite-apps' b"['org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop', 'firefox.desktop', 'thunderbird.desktop', 'hexchat.desktop', 'libreoffice-writer.desktop', 'libreoffice-calc.desktop', 'org.gnome.Terminal.desktop', 'org.gnome.Software.desktop', 'gnome-control-center.desktop']"
 b'org.gnome.desktop.interface' b'gtk-im-module' b"'gtk-im-context-simple'"
 b'org.gnome.desktop.interface' b'gtk-color-scheme' b"'selected_bg_color:#3465a4;selected_fg_color:#ffffff;'"
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-08-09 (3 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Alpha amd64 (20170809)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

According to your attached log it appears the wifi problem is a lower-level kernel/hardware/environmental problem:

Aug 12 15:23:29 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR kernel: rtlwifi: AP off, try to reconnect now
Aug 12 15:23:29 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR NetworkManager[480]: <warn> [1502576609.3158] sup-iface[0x6cab43d5e0,wlp1s0]: connection disconnected (reason -4)
Aug 12 15:25:22 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR kernel: rtlwifi: AP off, try to reconnect now
Aug 12 15:25:22 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR NetworkManager[480]: <warn> [1502576722.2160] sup-iface[0x6cab43d5e0,wlp1s0]: connection disconnected (reason -4)
Aug 12 15:25:42 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR kernel: rtlwifi: AP off, try to reconnect now
Aug 12 15:25:42 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR NetworkManager[480]: <warn> [1502576742.3840] sup-iface[0x6cab43d5e0,wlp1s0]: connection disconnected (reason -4)
Aug 12 15:25:58 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR NetworkManager[480]: <warn> [1502576758.0536] device (wlp1s0): link timed out.
Aug 12 15:25:58 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR NetworkManager[480]: <warn> [1502576758.0604] device (wlp1s0): Activation: failed for connection 'MySpectrumWiFiec-2G'
Aug 12 15:25:58 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR deja-dup-monito[2371]: Source ID 237 was not found when attempting to remove it
Aug 12 15:25:58 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR gsd-sharing[1120]: Failed to StopUnit service: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.systemd1.NoSuchUnit: Unit rygel.service not loaded.
Aug 12 15:25:58 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR NetworkManager[480]: <warn> [1502576758.3355] sup-iface[0x6cab43d5e0,wlp1s0]: connection disconnected (reason -3)
Aug 12 15:26:01 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR deja-dup-monito[2371]: Source ID 237 was not found when attempting to remove it
Aug 12 15:26:01 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR gsd-sharing[1120]: Failed to StopUnit service: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.systemd1.NoSuchUnit: Unit rygel.service not loaded.
Aug 12 15:26:01 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR systemd-resolved[647]: Using degraded feature set (UDP) for DNS server 192.168.1.1.
Aug 12 15:26:03 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR colord[1393]: failed to get session [pid 5025]: No data available
Aug 12 15:26:03 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR NetworkManager[480]: <warn> [1502576763.2316] dhcp6 (wlp1s0): hostname is not a FQDN, it will be ignored
Aug 12 15:26:27 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR kernel: rtlwifi: AP off, try to reconnect now
Aug 12 15:26:27 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR NetworkManager[480]: <warn> [1502576787.8924] sup-iface[0x6cab43d5e0,wlp1s0]: connection disconnected (reason -4)
Aug 12 15:26:43 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR NetworkManager[480]: <warn> [1502576803.0553] device (wlp1s0): link timed out.
Aug 12 15:26:43 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR NetworkManager[480]: <warn> [1502576803.0620] device (wlp1s0): Activation: failed for connection 'MySpectrumWiFiec-2G'
Aug 12 15:26:43 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR gsd-sharing[1120]: Failed to StopUnit service: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.systemd1.NoSuchUnit: Unit rygel.service not loaded.
Aug 12 15:26:46 username-Lenovo-ideapad-310-15ABR gsd-sharing[1120]: Failed to...

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

... so lack of wifi is not a gnome-shell bug. But the rendering of a white square is a gnome-shell bug.

[Charlie (hangar18)]

just revisiting this bug report to make an update. i still get the white box where the wifi signal icon should be when i click the arrow in the top right corner for the menu located there but it's very rare anymore. it still seems like i've lost connection when it happens and i've got to click on select network and then the box disappears and the wifi signal icon reappears and my connection comes back.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 17.10 (artful) reached end-of-life on July 19, 2018.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in and change the bug status to Confirmed.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-shell (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]