Wi-fi: "Device not managed" in Network Manager

Wi-fi: "Device not managed" in Network Manager - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: Wi-fi: "Device not managed" in Network Manager (/showthread.php?tid=9477)

Wi-fi: "Device not managed" in Network Manager - gfoty - 03-20-2020

Hi all—my PBP has been offline for most of its life, but recently I've started seeing "Device not managed" in the Network Manager menu where my wifi connections should be. I understand this to mean that Network Manager thinks some other system is managing the wifi interface, but I haven't been able to find out what.

I've run through the steps in the wiki under https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=Pinebook_Pro&redirect=no#WiFi_issues but come up short—nothing changes. Advice I've seen on other forums hasn't helped either.

Here's my /etc/network/interfaces:

Code:
# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)

# Include files from /etc/network/interfaces.d:

source-directory /etc/network/interfaces.d

(/etc/network/interfaces.d is empty.)

Here's /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf:

Code:
[main]

plugins=ifupdown,keyfile

[ifupdown]

managed=true

[device]

wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

Do you know where I can start looking to troubleshoot this? I see some wifi-related messages in `dmesg` but I'm not enough of a Linux networking guru to make sense of them.

Sadly, I do not have `ifconfig` or `iwconfig` or any such tools available, since they don't come in the stock install and I can't get online to install them.

(Last, semi-related thing: could someone let me know so I can edit the wiki to clarify which state of the wifi privacy switch is which? It says "2 blinks = enabled, 3 blinks = disabled", but I don't know if "enabled" means "the privacy switch is enabled" or "the wifi adapter is enabled". I've had to trial and error it.)

RE: Wi-fi: "Device not managed" in Network Manager - ndp - 03-21-2020

(03-20-2020, 01:14 PM)gfoty Wrote: Hi all—my PBP has been offline for most of its life, but recently I've started seeing "Device not managed" in the Network Manager menu where my wifi connections should be. I understand this to mean that Network Manager thinks some other system is managing the wifi interface, but I haven't been able to find out what.

I've run through the steps in the wiki under https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=Pinebook_Pro&redirect=no#WiFi_issues but come up short—nothing changes. Advice I've seen on other forums hasn't helped either.

Here's my /etc/network/interfaces:

Code:
# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8) # Include files from /etc/network/interfaces.d: source-directory /etc/network/interfaces.d

(/etc/network/interfaces.d is empty.)

Here's /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf:

Code:
[main] plugins=ifupdown,keyfile [ifupdown] managed=true [device] wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

Do you know where I can start looking to troubleshoot this? I see some wifi-related messages in `dmesg` but I'm not enough of a Linux networking guru to make sense of them.

Sadly, I do not have `ifconfig` or `iwconfig` or any such tools available, since they don't come in the stock install and I can't get online to install them.

(Last, semi-related thing: could someone let me know so I can edit the wiki to clarify which state of the wifi privacy switch is which? It says "2 blinks = enabled, 3 blinks = disabled", but I don't know if "enabled" means "the privacy switch is enabled" or "the wifi adapter is enabled". I've had to trial and error it.)

you may find the following post helpful:

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8313&pid=52645#pid52645

RE: Wi-fi: "Device not managed" in Network Manager - gfoty - 03-22-2020

(03-21-2020, 06:19 AM)ndp Wrote: you may find the following post helpful:

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8313&pid=52645#pid52645

Thanks—I gave the unbind + bind sequence a try, but no meaningful results. First time nothing happened, second time the `unbind` caused a segmentation fault, an unkillable `tee` process, and then a kernel oops at shutdown. Wifi never turned on.

Is there a way to interrogate the chip status? I'm out of my depth with the networking + kernel stuff going on here and would like to gain a foothold in what's going on (any RTFMs are welcome). Hoping I don't have a dead wifi chip.

RE: Wi-fi: "Device not managed" in Network Manager - wdt - 03-22-2020

ifconfig = net-tools (why, oh why)
rfkill list
wicd and networkManager conflict, purge wicd
tell systemd to restart?

command line?? set up wpa_supplicant.conf
Make a little script so you don't have to remember
It is good to be able to set up cli networking, for when
screw-ups happen

RE: Wi-fi: "Device not managed" in Network Manager - gfoty - 03-24-2020

(03-22-2020, 03:33 PM)wdt Wrote: ifconfig = net-tools (why, oh why)
rfkill list
wicd and networkManager conflict, purge wicd
tell systemd to restart?

command line?? set up wpa_supplicant.conf
Make a little script so you don't have to remember
It is good to be able to set up cli networking, for when
screw-ups happen

Thanks, I forgot about rfkill. I see two devices ("phys0" and "brcmfmac-wifi") soft blocked. I can unblock them and set up wlan0 using `ip link set wlan0 up` (which puts it in state UNKNOWN), but both entries in rfkill list get soft blocked again every time `network-manager` restarts. Trying to figure out why these are getting soft-blocked.

Checking into the network-manager logs (journalctl -f -u NetworkManager) shows some stuff going on with radio killswitches that I'm now trying to understand. There's also
/var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state, which shows wifi being disabled, but editing this file to enable it doesn't do any good (it also toggles back to disabled after restarting Network Manager).

I'm pretty sure the Pine + F11 killswitch is disabled (but can anybody tell me if 2 blinks means "wifi enabled" or "wifi disabled"? The wiki is ambiguous on this.)

RE: Wi-fi: "Device not managed" in Network Manager - gfoty - 03-26-2020

Argh, sorry for the noise, this turned out to be the dumbest possible thing. nm-applet (the Network Manager systray applet) has a right-click menu I didn't know about (hard to discover when you're just using the trackpad). This is, of course, is where the "Enable wifi" checkbox lives. (It took me spelunking in, like, the depths of Red Hat's bug tracker, to find someone mentioning this checkbox in passing, which I suddenly realized I had never seen.)