Can't access network on macbook air

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1

Hi all,

I installed fedora 42 workstation on an old macbook air, and I am having trouble getting an internet connection with the wifi. The machine is able to connect to wifi, but from there it’s not able to connect to anything, neither the internet nor other machines on the local network. ping 8.8.8.8 gives 100% packet loss, as does ping 192.168.1.185, another linux machine on the network. I tried setting the ipv6 method to Automatic, DHCP only, as suggested in a post elsewhere, but this has no effect. I also tried connecting through my phone’s hotspot, but same story there.

Restarting systemd-resolved has no effect.

I also tried running fixfiles onboot, and setting SELinux to permissive, but this didn’t do anything.

Wireless card: Broadcom BCM43224. Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge.

Systemd-resolved is running. I am seeing something weird in the status, though: It’s constantly flipping back and forth between
Using degraded feature set UDP instead of TCP for DNS server 192.168.1.1
Using degraded feature set UDP instead of DNS for TCP server 192.168.1.1

Systemd-networkd is active and running.

2

post the output from ip a, ip route and traceroute 8.8.8.8 and traceroute 192.168.1.185

3

Typing by hand from another computer, so subject to errors…
ip a (only including the bit about wifi)

2: wlps0b1: <NO_CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdis noqueue state DORMANT group default qlen 1000
lin/ether 0e:bb:a0:db:4c:77 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr 98:fe:94:3f:ac:d0

ip route

default via 192.168.1.1 dev wlp2sb0b1 proto dhcp src 192.168.1.175 metric 600
192.168.1.0/24 dev wlp2sb01 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.175 metric 600

traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets

and it stalls there.

traceroute to 192.168.1.185 (192.168.1.185), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 0fc1-0000-0000-0000-f280-8b29-07d0-2001.dyn.estpak.ee (192.168.1.175) 3083.603 ms !H 3083.455 ms !H 3083.429 ms !H
4

That wireless network (wlps0b1) is NO_CARRIER - it’s not connected to a Wireless access point. The kernel also has it DORMANT meaning it’s not actually usable. It’s on, it’s ready, but it’s not connected to an access point.

As such, unless there’s another route out of this machine, you’re not going to get any reply from pings, (or my traceroute - sorry for making you type all that! :))

Have another crack at finding your router’s SSID, connecting to it and putting your password in. the NO_CARRIER should vanish and so should the DORMANT. and look more like mine. (I don’t actually use wifi, so I had to turn mine on and connect it to see what it would look like!)

3: wlp6s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 0e:c4:4f:72:d5:24 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr 50:e0:85:f5:82:05
    altname wlx50e085f58205
    inet 192.168.0.155/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute wlp6s0
       valid_lft 86395sec preferred_lft 86395sec
    inet6 fe80::4cd0:907a:ca40:bfe9/64 scope link noprefixroute
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
1 Like
5

Thanks, @anothermindbomb!

Turns out the wifi started working again after the laptop went to sleep. No further action required on my part. Which, obviously, is the worst kind of bug fix. In any case, now it works, and I hope that it will stay working for a while :slight_smile: