Howto enable WIFI?

,

No worries, frustration will give way to enlightenment then it will all be past.
So if it is disconnected but the device is “seen” as existing, that normally can be attributed to invalid connection credentials.
Yeah sorry for the lazy name response, Even though my wifi is connected currently I generally prefer copper.
As for rfkill, it should be rfkill unblock wlan is my understanding, but I may be incorrect since referring to something by type seems rather indiscriminate and ID seems more appropriate, but meh it’s in rfkills doc’s.

2 Likes

That command is shown in the man page as rfkill [options] [command] [id|type ...] which tells me you can use either type or the device specific ID. Thus if using unblock and your wifi device is named wlp4s0 as mine is then the command would be rfkill unblock wlp4s0

@josephb, it seems with what you posted the command for you would be rfkill unblock wlp6s0 or rfkill unblock wifi. (The first using the device name and the second using the type shown.) Yes you would need to use sudo with both forms.

1 Like

Thank you for the response, JV. So I added my account to the suders file, just to do EXACTLY what you wrote (as opposed to using a root terminal session). Then, using sudo rfkill unblock wifi, it returns to the prompt with no other output.
However, using sudo rfkill unblock wlp6s0 (after making sure I have ls and 1s and 0s and Os typed correctly) I get an error message. Quoting in it’s entirety… “rfkill: invalid identifier: wlp6s0”

May I ask: what do you get if you put in a deliberately wrong name into the rfkill unblock command?

And again, that device name comes from the output of nmcli d show. I’m surprised that one of the rfkill commands seems to recognize the wifi and the other doesn’t.

Edit. the sudo rfkill unblock wlan command returns to the prompt too, with no other output.

I get exactly what you got.

Did you do the nmcli d show command previously suggested and verify the name the system assigned to that device?
Mine gives

$ nmcli d show
GENERAL.DEVICE:                         wlp4s0
GENERAL.TYPE:                           wifi

so I am able to confirm the device name and type quite easily. Then the name shown by the output of the nmcli command is what would be used with the rfkill command.

Did you also check the state of the device again after the most recent rfkill command? rfkill list all

JV, Yes. I did the nvcli d show command to verify the system name. Because I am (obviously!) prone to typos, I made sure that I was able to distinguish my (lower case) ls from 1s and Os from 0s. (that the letter and number - not easily distinguished in all fonts). After 3 days of this, I’m careful to make sure that I entered it correctly when I report back, but yes, mistakes happen.
Here’s what nmcli d shows for the wifi.

GENERAL.DEVICE: enp7s0
GENERAL.TYPE: ethernet
GENERAL.HWADDR: 74:E6:E2:1A:59:33
GENERAL.MTU: 1500
GENERAL.STATE: 20 (unavailable)
GENERAL.CONNECTION: –
GENERAL.CON-PATH: –
WIRED-PROPERTIES.CARRIER: off

GENERAL.DEVICE: wlp6s0
GENERAL.TYPE: wifi
GENERAL.HWADDR: 7E:D1:1C:85:F1:55
GENERAL.MTU: 1500
GENERAL.STATE: 20 (unavailable)
GENERAL.CONNECTION: –
GENERAL.CON-PATH: –

EDIT!
and… rfkill list all still shows
1: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
2: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
3: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
10: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no

So yes, the Dell-Wifi is still hard-blocked.

You have 2 different machines and likely 2 different wifi chipsets.
Make sure you have fully updated both machines sudo dnf upgrade -y and rebooted after the update.

Then please post the output of inxi -Nxx from both systems. Make sure we can tell which is the inspiron (works) and which is the precision (doesn’t work).

JV, from the Inspirion (the working laptop), inxi -Nxx returns:
Network: Device-1: Intel Cannon Lake PCH CNVi WiFi driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: 3000 bus-ID: 00:14.3 chip-ID: 8086:a370

BUT! I re-installed the original F35 when I started having this problem, like I had done successfully on the Inspiron. The command inxi is NOT part of that, sadly and I can’t dnf install inxi, 'cause I’m off-line. What a conundrum!

USB flash drive?

Can you connect the Precision to the router by cable? If so that will get you the network while you work on the wifi issue.

Good thought, Matthew, but that was a failure too. I would need to find the executable for inxi (I assume it’s something like inxi.rpm) and I would have to use the find command to locate it.

I’ve been a linux user for almost 20 years, but I had forgotten how bad the find command is. I vaguely recall some syntax oddity where you had to use something like $find -print / “file name here” where / is the starting directory. But the best I’ve done returns about 100 lines of non-information. Literally. It seems to be returning the directory names it finds.

Oh, and the man pages for it are almost as helpful. Sigh. This will take me a couple of hours to sort through, and I’m thanking my lucky stars that I’m retired.

The rabbit hole deepens. I went to https://pkgs.org/search/?q=inxi, which actually seemed to point to the inxi rpm file. But the link actually points to an web page for inxi-3.3.06-1.fc35.noarch.rpm, not the .rpm itself.
There are a few links there, but none seem to point to the actual rpm.
I also see a list of dependencies for inxi, which sort of tells me that copying over the executable is just the beginning of a lengthy process.
For tonight, I’m giving up. But tomorrow the plan is to start with a freshly downloaded copy of F35 that I’ll install from scratch to the non-working machine, if only to see if that brings back wifi. If not, I may be forced to install some other linux like Debian or Ubuntu or even wait until May when F36 comes out.
At least I have one working system, even if the mystery is nutzo-making.

There is another way to get the info I asked for from inxi. That would be to run the command lspci -nn and send that output. It will provide enough info to identify the wifi chipset and verify which driver is at fault.

If you have another Fedora Linux system, dnf download inxi.

If not: inxi - Fedora Packages

That web page has the download links if you scroll down a little.

same (or similar) problem on Fed 36/6.0.5
rfkill list all → no such device
inxi -Nxx → Device 1 Ralink RT5390 Wireless 802.11n IT/1R PCIe driver: N/A pcie: speed 2.5 GT/s lANES: 1 BUS-id: 02:00:0 CHIP-id 1814:5390
lspci -nn → same info
nmcli connection show → does not list the wifi wlp2s0 but does list the wired connections
Wired connections get internet OK
Wifi worked OK yesterday