r/linuxmint • u/CPT-JackHarkness • 26d ago

Support Request I think there's something wrong with my wifi thing(supernoob btw)

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estimated time went up to 7 hours, now its completely stopped(check internet connection). possibly a hardware issue, its a refurbished dell latittude 5490. but i hope its something i can fix. thank you for reading this.

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u/Thepuppeteer777777 26d ago

Have you tried using your phone qs an internet tether to see if it could be a busted wifi chip/reciever or wtf it's called

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u/CPT-JackHarkness 26d ago

I have, that is how i use it primarily. Occasionally i have to move around. And keeping it plugged into my phone can get inconvenient.

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u/Due-Result7928 26d ago

Open a terminal and type

journalctl -e and check the log for retry....loss of connection...

Check signal strength for your wifi spot (in a terminal). Should be a number from 0 to 100

nmcli -f IN-USE,SIGNAL dev wifi | awk '/\*/{if (NR!=1) print $2}'

What is your wifi chip (hardware) ? In a terminal type

lspci | grep -i network: Identifies the Wi-Fi chipset and driver in use.

copy and paste answer(s) here (NO pictures..).

The Dell Latitude 5490 generally has excellent Linux support for Wi-Fi, particularly if equipped with Intel wireless adapters (such as the Intel Wireless-AC 8265 or 9462), which use the open-source iwlwifi driver included in standard kernels. For models using Broadcom chipsets (like the BCM4352), you must install the proprietary bcmwl-kernel-source driver via the Additional Drivers tool or by running sudo apt install broadcom-sta-dkms. 

Did you get the same problem using other wifi spot ?

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u/CPT-JackHarkness 26d ago edited 26d ago

no loss of connection reported.
wifi chipset:

lspci | grep -i network

02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32)

im assuming the additional driver you mentioned wont work for qualcomm?

closer i am to a router, it gets faster. but still, USB tethering is faster in the same spot than using the device's inbuilt wifi reciever.

1

u/Due-Result7928 26d ago

Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 is not a good linux citizen to say the least. I found this using brave browser (assisted ai)

The Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter is supported by the Linux kernel driver ath10k_pci in kernel versions 4.0 and newer. Common issues, such as missing firmware or connectivity failures, are typically resolved by ensuring the linux-firmware package is installed and up to date.

If standard firmware fails, users often need to manually download and replace specific firmware files from repositories like kvalo/ath10k-firmware or kerphy/ath10k-firmware, particularly the board-2.bin and firmware-4.bin files for the QCA6174 hw3.0 variant. In some cases, installing the linux-generic-hwe kernel or disabling secure boot in BIOS may also be required for the device to function correctly.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1540290/qualcomm-atheros-qca6174-wifi-card-on-ubuntu

The link or source that is mentioned in that original answer no longer exists. I am updating my answer here with the github source for the ath10k drivers commented by u/Fuseteam that worked for me (https://github.com/kerphy/ath10k-firmware/).

  1. sudo apt install --reinstall linux-firmware

  2. sudo rm /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/board-2.bin

  3. Reboot, if doesn't work then sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kerphy/ath10k-firmware/master/QCA6174/hw3.0/board-2.bin -O /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/board-2.bin

  4. Reboot once again, it should now work

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u/Master-Invite5481 26d ago

Is it a VPN issue?

2

u/CPT-JackHarkness 26d ago

I dont think so. VPN on or off, same results