WiFi stopped working overnight, rtw89

This morning I went to use my laptop, and there was no network connection. The tray menu says “no available connections.” I am able to connect with a usb wifi adapter to get info.

I’ve been using the rtw89 driver and it’s worked flawlessly until this morning. As far as I know, nothing has changed besides a reboot last night.

inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --width
http://sprunge.us/BgEAv4

rfkill list all

0: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
1: ideapad_bluetooth: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
2: hci0: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
4: phy1: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no

ip link

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp2s0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 7c:8a:e1:93:c8:c1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: docker0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default 
    link/ether 02:42:25:72:8c:c0 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
4: br-8ececc8eef1e: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default 
    link/ether 02:42:c2:e1:d3:a2 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
5: tailscale0: <POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1280 qdisc fq_codel state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 500
    link/none 
6: br-be832da52361: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP mode DEFAULT group default 
    link/ether 02:42:8d:4d:78:ca brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
8: veth2f1fc72@if7: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br-be832da52361 state UP mode DEFAULT group default 
    link/ether 8e:3f:2b:72:ec:42 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 2
10: vethe9c349e@if9: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br-be832da52361 state UP mode DEFAULT group default 
    link/ether 06:13:4a:00:8f:e6 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 0
12: vethf6a6c39@if11: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br-be832da52361 state UP mode DEFAULT group default 
    link/ether 8a:bf:e9:b6:69:de brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 1
14: wlp5s0f4u2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:e0:4d:04:c5:30 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

wlp5s0f4u2 is the usb wifi

I decided to switch to a 5.17 kernel since the right driver is supposedly included, and it works again. I don’t know if it’s because of the new kernel, or just because it reinstalled the kernel systems and that fixed it. I did try some things to do that myself, but it ultimately did nothing. Good news I guess xD

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Hi,
As far as I know, generally it is preferable to use LTS kernel.
It is much more stable and I don’t think a newer kernel would let you do something you can’t do with an “older” LTS kernel.

It seems like the issue was with the driver I had to install manually, but it’s included in the later kernels which does work right away. For now this seems like the best option

For now it does, yes. Just remember about it when updating your system.

As @limotux said, it’s preferable to use an LTS kernel, so you could try the driver that’s in the AUR:

$ pamac search 8852
rtw89-dkms-git                                                                                                                                                                                                                        1:r148.4dc5371-3  AUR
Driver for Realtek 8852AE, an 802.11ax device

So, it could be installed using:
Ensure the kernel headers are installed first:

pamac install $(pamac list --quiet --installed | grep "^linux[0-9]*[-rt]*$" | awk '{print $1"-headers"}' ORS=' ')

This will install the kernel headers for all installed kernels.

Then install the driver:

pamac build rtw89-dkms-git

It should, theoretically work if you change kernels as well.

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Yeah that’s how I had it installed before. I wonder if it would be worth switching back again and trying now, but reinstalling didn’t seem to help before.

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