after today's Kinetic updates, WiFi no longer working, so laptop basically useless

[Jonathan Kamens]

ThinkPad X1 Carbon 6th Gen
WiFi was working fine.
Installed today's batch of Kinetic updates.
Laptop can no longer see any WiFi networks (had to dig out my old ThinkPad USB dongle and plug into my router to be able to submit this bug report).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.10
Package: network-manager 1.40.0-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.19.0-15.15-generic 5.19.0
Uname: Linux 5.19.0-15-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.23.0-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Sep 26 17:09:25 2022
IfupdownConfig:
 # interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-08-16 (1137 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" - Release amd64 (20190416)
IpRoute:
 default via 192.168.4.1 dev enp0s31f6 proto dhcp src 192.168.4.158 metric 100
 169.254.0.0/16 dev docker0 scope link metric 1000 linkdown
 172.17.0.0/16 dev docker0 proto kernel scope link src 172.17.0.1 linkdown
 192.168.4.0/24 dev enp0s31f6 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.4.158 metric 100
SourcePackage: network-manager
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to kinetic on 2022-09-24 (2 days ago)
nmcli-nm:
 RUNNING VERSION STATE STARTUP CONNECTIVITY NETWORKING WIFI-HW WIFI WWAN-HW WWAN
 running 1.40.0 connected started full enabled enabled enabled missing enabled

[darkshadow (shadowofdarkness)]

Today's update installed iwd to replace wpa_supplicant but that is still installed and conflicting.
Run the following and restart

systemctl disable wpa_supplicant

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

you can uninstall wpasupplicant instead of disabling it but if they conflict we need to resolve it differently than by adding iwd as we did

[darkshadow (shadowofdarkness)]

I just felt disabling it until it was better fixed was better then removal, which causes a couple meta packages like ubuntu-desktop to also remove and could be forgotten causing issues in the future of not getting new packages.

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

systemctl disable wpa_supplicant wasn't good enough. I had to mask it. Before I masked it, something started it on reboot even when it was disabled (I don't know what was starting it).

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

It looks like in today's Kinetic update iwd was removed, perhaps because of this bug?

If so then the removal caused another problem: /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/iwd.conf still existed after the iwd package was removed (I don't understand why, honestly), so even after I unmasked and re-enabled wpa_supplicant, NetworkManager still thought it was supposed to be using iwd instead. I had to delete iwd.conf by hand and restart NetworkManager to regain wifi connectivity.

[zubozrout (zubozrout)]

Thank you very much @Jonathan. I can confirm removing the iwd.conf did the trick on my end.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

You can't uninstall wpasupplicant because that removes ubuntu-desktop. Removing /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/iwd.conf works though.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Fix in bug 1990705?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Since this only seems to happen on dist upgrades (or it would after 22.10 is released) and we have a workaround, it doesn't need to be Critical anymore.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package iwd - 1.30-1ubuntu2

---------------
iwd (1.30-1ubuntu2) kinetic; urgency=medium

  * debian/rules:
    - install the nm config in /usr/lib instead of /etc, resolves the
      problems where the config is leftover after removing the package
  * debian/iwd.preinst:
    - remove the config from /etc on upgrade (lp: #1990891)

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Fri, 07 Oct 2022 10:03:25 +0200