NetworkManager managed wifi can't connect

[Nikolay Borisov]

My computer has an built-in intel ax200 adapter (the motherboard is asock taichi x570). With the latest stable 5.4 kernel on Ubuntu Focal 20.04 I cannot get the card to connect to my home wifi (2.4ghz). The errors I get are :

iwlwifi 0000:05:00.0: No beacon heard and the time event is over already...
wlp5s0: Connection to AP 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce lost
wlp5s0: send auth to 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce (try 2/3)

Initially I thought this could be due to a problem with the iwlwifi driver and the firmware used. I upgraded to a custom-build (using ubuntu's configuration) 5.10 kernel And now the errors I was getting were:

[нд яну 17 22:01:33 2021] iwlwifi 0000:05:00.0: No beacon heard and the session protection is over already...
[нд яну 17 22:01:33 2021] wlp5s0: Connection to AP 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce lost
[нд яну 17 22:01:33 2021] wlp5s0: send auth to 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce (try 3/3)
[нд яну 17 22:01:34 2021] wlp5s0: authentication with 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce timed out
[нд яну 17 22:01:35 2021] wlp5s0: authenticate with 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce
[нд яну 17 22:01:35 2021] wlp5s0: send auth to 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce (try 1/3)
[нд яну 17 22:01:36 2021] iwlwifi 0000:05:00.0: No beacon heard and the session protection is over already...
[нд яну 17 22:01:36 2021] wlp5s0: Connection to AP 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce lost
[нд яну 17 22:01:36 2021] wlp5s0: send auth to 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce (try 2/3)
[нд яну 17 22:01:37 2021] iwlwifi 0000:05:00.0: No beacon heard and the session protection is over already...
[нд яну 17 22:01:37 2021] wlp5s0: Connection to AP 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce lost
[нд яну 17 22:01:37 2021] wlp5s0: send auth to 30:b5:c2:75:a4:ce (try 3/3)

The change of message is because newer versions of the driver/firmware have moved part of the processing in firmware. At this point I was willing to accept this is an issue with the kernel. However, I added the following configuration to /etc/network/interfaces:

allow-hotplug wlp5s0
iface wlp5s0 inet dhcp
      wpa-ssid HOME
      wpa-psk <REDACTED>
      wpa-debug-level 2

And what do you know - I was able to connect to my home wifi with no problems. I'm attaching the output of wpa_supplicant run with -dd from both the /etc/network/interfaces-based configuration (wpa_supplicant_working) and from the NetworkManager managed one ( I have edited /lib/systemd/system/wpa_supplicant.service to include -f /var/log/wpa_supplicant -dd) options. I wasn't able to figure any glaring differences between the flows of the two.

[Nikolay Borisov (n-borisov-lkml)]

Here's the output wpa_supplicant as used from NetworkManager and under which my intel ax200 based interface cannot connect.

[Nikolay Borisov (n-borisov-lkml)]

Just to make it explicitly clear - I think there are 2 bugs involved - 1 is related to driver/firmware on older 5.4 kernel since on that version I couldn't get the adapter to connect even with the /etc/network/interfaces based configuration, but on kernel 5.10 it works. This bug deals only with not being able to connect via NetworkManager to my wifi even on 5.10. Once this is resolved I can go back and try to do bisection of the kernel which patch enables the /etc/networking/interfaces configuration to work.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for the bug report and the details, you would probably have a better chance to get a reply reporting directly upstream for network manager since that component currently doesn't have a dedicated maintainer in Ubuntu and is dealt with on best effort basis

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/issues/

[Nikolay Borisov (n-borisov-lkml)]

Thanks for the reply, I opened the following upstream issue: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/-/issues/635

Though I'm not sure how effective that is going to be as ubuntu is not using the latest upstream NM so they just tell me "please update to latest version and report back"...