WiFi Disconnection – Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 on Fedora 42

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1

I’m experiencing brief but frequent WiFi disconnections with the Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 wireless adapter on Fedora 42. The connection typically drops for 1–2 seconds, then automatically reconnects. This happens unpredictably, including during active usage (browsing, gaming, etc.).

System Information

Component Details
Laptop Lenovo IdeaPad 3 15ALC6
CPU AMD Ryzen™ 5 5500U with Radeon™ Graphics × 12
Memory 16.0 GiB
GPU AMD Radeon™ Graphics
WiFi Adapter Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac
Firmware GLCN63WW
OS Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition)
GNOME Version 48
Window System Wayland
Kernel 6.15.10-200.fc42.x86_64

Any help is appreciated!

2

This issue also occurred on Fedora 41 and with older kernel versions, so it doesn’t appear to be specific to Fedora 42 or kernel 6.15. The disconnection behavior has been persistent across multiple Fedora releases.

4

Some time back I had a similar occurrance with a qualcom card that would not consistently hold a connection to the wifi router.
I fixed the issue by replacing the qualcom card with an intel AX210 and have been trouble free since.

1 Like
5

Just to be sure before I buy it: would the AX210 work with my laptop (Lenovo IdeaPad 3 15ALC6 with an AMD Ryzen 5 5500U)?

I’ve heard some laptops have compatibility issues or BIOS whitelists, so I wanted to check.

Thanks again for your help!

6

Looking at the support site for your laptop, under Drivers & Software there are two options for drivers, one being Qualcomm, the other being MediaTek. So those were probably the two options provided for people during configuration.

There is a thread on Reddit with someone who upgraded components and another user asks about the card @computersavvy mentions and the white list issue here. It appears they had no issue and didn’t have to go poking around with white lists. Judging by that it should just be a matter of switching them out.

Before forking out money for that though, have you tried downgrading the firmware? We had a thread not long back with a user having a similar issue with a Realtek card and rolling back the firmware resolved the issue. I believe it was the 20250808 version that introduced problems that caused their wifi to drop speeds to a crawl and/or disconnect.

1 Like
7

Thanks so much for looking into it and for the Reddit thread — that’s very reassuring about the whitelist issue. I’ll keep that option open.

As for the firmware downgrade you mentioned, I haven’t tried that yet — honestly, I didn’t even realize that was an option.

Could you point me in the right direction on how to downgrade the firmware for my Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 card on Fedora? I’d love to try that before replacing hardware.

Thanks again for your help!

8

You can check what’s currently installed in the terminal with…

sudo dnf list --installed atheros-firmware

To downgrade is simple…

sudo dnf downgrade atheros-firmware

You can see the output results from my own system below…

[brian@thinkpad ~]: sudo dnf downgrade atheros-firmware
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Package                                                           Arch            Version                                                            Repository                                Size
Downgrading:
 atheros-firmware                                                 noarch          20250311-1.fc42                                                    fedora                                36.5 MiB
   replacing atheros-firmware                                     noarch          20250808-1.fc42                                                    updates                               36.5 MiB

Transaction Summary:
 Replacing:          1 package
 Downgrading:        1 package

Total size of inbound packages is 37 MiB. Need to download 37 MiB.
After this operation, 7 KiB extra will be used (install 37 MiB, remove 37 MiB).
Is this ok [y/N]: n
Operation aborted by the user.
[brian@thinkpad ~]:

If I was going to go through with the downgrade, it would downgrade from 20250808 to 20250311

2 Likes
9

I will try this tommorow thanks again!

10

I managed to downgrade to older firmware but now software manager pushes the newer firmware

Screenshot From 2025-08-26 14-38-54
Screenshot From 2025-08-26 14-38-541322×922 44.6 KB

11

You can “lock” packages from being upgraded with versionlock as part of dnf.

sudo dnf versionlock add atheros-firmware

Then try updating the repos and upgrading with…

sudo dnf updateinfo list && sudo dnf upgrade

It shouldn’t push the update. If you need to remove locked packages you can use delete for a specific package (like atheros-firmware) or if you have a bunch of locked packages you can use clear. Using list will show “locked” packages.

As to GNOME Software, after you’ve done the terminal, refresh the repos in there and see if it’s still pushing the update. I can’t give you an example as I delete package management GUIs and just use the terminal.

The most important question though is, did the downgrade help in anyway? If not, there’s no point in keeping the older firmware, so you might as well take the update, forget the above and file a bug on the Red Hat / Fedora Bugzilla.

Here’s the output of my own terminal, downgrading the firmware, locking it, attempting to upgrade it, unlocking it, and upgrading it.

[brian@thinkpad ~]: sudo dnf downgrade atheros-firmware
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Package                                                           Arch            Version                                                            Repository                                Size
Downgrading:
 atheros-firmware                                                 noarch          20250311-1.fc42                                                    fedora                                36.5 MiB
   replacing atheros-firmware                                     noarch          20250808-1.fc42                                                    updates                               36.5 MiB

Transaction Summary:
 Replacing:          1 package
 Downgrading:        1 package

Total size of inbound packages is 37 MiB. Need to download 37 MiB.
After this operation, 7 KiB extra will be used (install 37 MiB, remove 37 MiB).
Is this ok [y/N]: y
[1/1] atheros-firmware-0:20250311-1.fc42.noarch                                                                                                            100% |   5.2 MiB/s |  36.6 MiB |  00m07s
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1/1] Total                                                                                                                                                100% |   4.7 MiB/s |  36.6 MiB |  00m08s
Running transaction
[1/4] Verify package files                                                                                                                                 100% |  11.0   B/s |   1.0   B |  00m00s
[2/4] Prepare transaction                                                                                                                                  100% |  14.0   B/s |   2.0   B |  00m00s
[3/4] Downgrading atheros-firmware-0:20250311-1.fc42.noarch                                                                                                100% | 279.4 MiB/s |  36.6 MiB |  00m00s
[4/4] Removing atheros-firmware-0:20250808-1.fc42.noarch                                                                                                   100% |   1.4 KiB/s | 406.0   B |  00m00s
Complete!
[brian@thinkpad ~]: sudo dnf versionlock add atheros-firmware
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Adding versionlock on "atheros-firmware = 20250311-1.fc42".
[brian@thinkpad ~]: sudo dnf updateinfo list && sudo dnf upgrade
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Name                   Type        Severity                                 Package              Issued
FEDORA-2025-95ca883414 bugfix      Moderate atheros-firmware-20250808-1.fc42.noarch 2025-08-13 01:15:46
FEDORA-2025-af128cd558 enhancement None     atheros-firmware-20250613-1.fc42.noarch 2025-06-24 01:43:05
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Nothing to do.
[brian@thinkpad ~]: sudo dnf versionlock delete atheros-firmware
Deleting versionlock entry:
# Added by 'versionlock add' command on 2025-08-26 13:27:20
Package name: atheros-firmware
evr = 20250311-1.fc42
[brian@thinkpad ~]: sudo dnf updateinfo list && sudo dnf upgrade
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Name                   Type        Severity                                 Package              Issued
FEDORA-2025-95ca883414 bugfix      Moderate atheros-firmware-20250808-1.fc42.noarch 2025-08-13 01:15:46
FEDORA-2025-af128cd558 enhancement None     atheros-firmware-20250613-1.fc42.noarch 2025-06-24 01:43:05
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Package                                                           Arch            Version                                                            Repository                                Size
Upgrading:
 atheros-firmware                                                 noarch          20250808-1.fc42                                                    updates                               36.5 MiB
   replacing atheros-firmware                                     noarch          20250311-1.fc42                                                    fedora                                36.5 MiB

Transaction Summary:
 Upgrading:          1 package
 Replacing:          1 package

Total size of inbound packages is 37 MiB. Need to download 37 MiB.
After this operation, 7 KiB will be freed (install 37 MiB, remove 37 MiB).
Is this ok [y/N]: y
[1/1] atheros-firmware-0:20250808-1.fc42.noarch                                                                                                            100% |   4.1 MiB/s |  36.6 MiB |  00m09s
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1/1] Total                                                                                                                                                100% |   3.6 MiB/s |  36.6 MiB |  00m10s
Running transaction
[1/4] Verify package files                                                                                                                                 100% |  12.0   B/s |   1.0   B |  00m00s
[2/4] Prepare transaction                                                                                                                                  100% |  16.0   B/s |   2.0   B |  00m00s
[3/4] Upgrading atheros-firmware-0:20250808-1.fc42.noarch                                                                                                  100% | 299.9 MiB/s |  36.6 MiB |  00m00s
[4/4] Removing atheros-firmware-0:20250311-1.fc42.noarch                                                                                                   100% |   1.5 KiB/s | 398.0   B |  00m00s
Complete!
[brian@thinkpad ~]:

As I said earlier in the post, how GNOME Software and Plasma Discover deal with that I don’t know. I believe Plasma Discover (I use KDE) still uses dnf4, so versionlock isn’t an option without the versionlock plugin on earlier versions of dnf. I’m not sure if GNOME Software uses dnf4 or dnf5 on it’s backend.

2 Likes
12

Thanks for the detailed explanation and steps — really appreciate it. I haven’t done any testing yet to see if the issue persists after the downgrade, so I’m not sure if locking the older firmware is necessary at this point. I’ll try to check soon and see if the downgrade made any difference.

13

I don’t have that laptop so cannot test it.

However, it is worth it to note that almost all M.2 network cards will work in almost all installations as long as the drivers are available, and that the drivers for intel cards are included in fedora.

The M.2 card slots for network interfaces are reasonably standard (99+%) across the board.

1 Like
14

Thanks for the response! I haven’t noticed any disconnects since I downgraded, but I think it’s too early to consider this resolved. The disconnects tend to happen randomly—sometimes once a week, other times multiple times a day. When would be the right time to mark my post as resolved?

15

When you are confident that the disconnects are not still occuring.

DIsconnects often follow some less obvious problems that will be recorded in the journal. You should be able to use journalctl in a terminal to view records from a boot that had disconnects to find messages associated with disconnects.

Then you can check to see if those messages are present when using the downgraded firmware. The journal collects massive levels of detail, so it can take some effort to find “filters” that weed out the mass of irrelevant detail. Introductory tutorials: https://linuxhandbook.com/journalctl-command/ and https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/viewing-logs/.

Are WiFi disconnects associated with adusting the angle of the screen? Laptop WiFi sometimes has problems with antenna connections (using a cable routed past the hinges to the antenna location in the lid). The antenna is often sold with the connecting cable as a unit.

1 Like
16

Thanks for replying!! I’ve never noticed any WiFi disconnects related to adjusting the screen angle on my laptop.

17

After downgrading the drivers as previously suggested, the WiFi disconnection issue persists. The system logs show the following error during disconnection events:

wlp1s0: failed to remove key (0, 7a:95:7f:eb:09:f3) from hardware (-110)

Screenshot From 2025-09-06 22-28-26
Screenshot From 2025-09-06 22-28-26310×143 7.32 KB

18

Managed to open up my laptops back

IMG_20250910_154010
IMG_20250910_1540101200×1200 389 KB

19

That is definitely the wifi card. It is easily replaced and a very good intel replacement is only about $25.

1 Like
20

Found it for 12€ (the card you recommended that is)

1 Like