Just updated Fedora packages and now I get "wpa_supplicant timed out" every 30 seconds

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1

I have an old-ish laptop with Fedora 42, which I tend not to update very often. So I just did it now, after several weeks, and everything seemed to go fine. But now, without changing anything else (same router, same settings, etc), the wifi is horrible: each 30 seconds after connecting, I get a “wpa_supplicant timed out” error message. Wifi disconnects, and sometimes it reconnects automatically, only to disconnect about 30-35 seconds later.

Of course, trying to boot into a previous kernel seems not to do anything: the connection still drops, making it very hard to do useful stuff with it.

I don’t see what could have caused it, and especially why falling back to a previous kernel wouldn’t solve it.

Google shows some people using iwd, but I’d really like not having to spend hours trying to fix something that worked 10 minutes ago. Is there some reasonable explanation on what might have happened, and how could I just rollback? Should I try downgrading a specific package? I can check the dnf logs to get package versions, if that can help.

Edit: lspci shows “Network controller: Qualcom Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter”

So far, I tried:

  • Downgrading atheros-firmware-20251125-1.fc42 to atheros-firmware-20250311-1.fc42; no change.
  • Downgrading NetworkManager-1:1.52.2-1.fc42 to NetworkManager-1:1.52.0-1.fc42; no change.

After each downgrade, I reboot the laptop and when it boots again, it’s still disconnecting around every 30 seconds.

3

Well ok, I ended up replace wpa_supplicant with iwd after all… it survived slightly longer, but after about 300 seconds, once again the connection was lost. And then it lasted only about 80 seconds.

Are there other obvious packages I should try downgrading? I’m out of ideas for now.

Otherwise, should I get a wifi dongle to avoid Atheros-related issues? If so, which brand would be better for Linux? (my wifi card has no 5 GHz, only 2.4 GHz, so if getting a USB dongle might provide that, it could be worthwhile… as long as the dongle doesn’t have the same issue.)

4

Many seem to have issues with qualcomm wifi cards, similar to what you describe. It appears to be mostly driver and/or hardware issues.

A wifi dongle would be good, as long as you make certain it has a chipset that is supported in linux. The intel chipsets seem to be almost 100% supported. The dongle would also give you the additional bandwidth of 5 GHz in addition to 2.4 GHz. If the advertised specs do not provide the chipset info (many do not) then it is best to avoid that device.

Almost every device that is made today supports both 2.4 & 5 GHz wifi.

5

Thanks, I’ll consider buying one.

For now, I ended up applying some modprobe suggestions I found:

$ sudo echo "options ath9k nohwcrypt=1 ps_enable=0" >/etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf

And it seems to have restored it. Maybe it will consume more battery but I don’t care, the laptop is always plugged on anyway.