WiFi loses connectivity periodically wpa_supplicant reason 4

These are some issues I initially had with my Lenovo 100S with a Realtek 8821ae wifi adapter

I have been losing my wifi connection a lot lately with wpa_supplicant exiting with

wpa_supplicant[474]: wlp2s0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx reason=4 locally_generated=1

along with other random disconnects. It became more and more frequent by the day to the point where the connection would be dropped after just seconds of connectivity.

I found a list of wpa_supplicant reason codes that claims reason 4 means Disassociated due to inactivity. The connection is certainly not idle when I lose my connectivity, so maybe some connectivity check is failing.

So I enabled debugging in NetworkManager by writing to /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/00-defaults.conf

[logging]
level=DEBUG

and followed along whenever I lost connectivity journalctl -u NetworkManager -f.

Realtek network card

After a lot of digging, I found a post explaining that Realtek adapters are know for losing connectivity, which seemed like an instant match for my troubles. It also pointed in the direction of a GitHub repo containing sources of the latest updates to Realtek adapter drivers.

$ git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi-new ~/src/rtlwifi-new
$ cd ~/src/rtlwifi-new

But when ready to run make I did not have all the dependencies

$ make
make -C /lib/modules/4.10.5-1-ARCH/build M=/home/noop/src/rtlwifi_new modules
make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/lib/modules/4.10.5-1-ARCH/build'
make[1]: *** No rule to make target 'modules'.  Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/lib/modules/4.10.5-1-ARCH/build'
make: *** [Makefile:58: all] Error 2

In my case, on Arch Linux 4.10.5, I needed the linux-headers package

# pacman -S linux-headers

Now it looks better

$: make -C /lib/modules/4.10.5-1-ARCH/build M=/home/noop/src/rtlwifi_new modules
make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/lib/modules/4.10.5-1-ARCH/build'
  Building modules, stage 2.
  MODPOST 15 modules
make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/lib/modules/4.10.5-1-ARCH/build'
Making backups
Install rtlwifi SUCCESS

Then install

# make install

Enable module

# modprobe rtl8821ae

And restart the machine

Connectivity still lags

The driver certainly fixed the connection drops, but now a different issue arised. At specific intervals I’m temporarily losing connectivity. The interfaces are still up and running, but I am getting random ping spikes of > 1000 ms in a time frame of about 10 seconds before returning to normal. During the spikes, the debug logs are giving me some valuable hints:

Mar 27 10:48:59 NetworkManager[419]: <debug> [1490604539.7178] device[0xfa8c50] (wlp2s0): wifi-scan: scanning requested
Mar 27 10:48:59 NetworkManager[419]: <debug> [1490604539.7180] device[0xfa8c50] (wlp2s0): wifi-scan: no SSIDs to probe scan
Mar 27 10:48:59 NetworkManager[419]: <debug> [1490604539.7193] device[0xfa8c50] (wlp2s0): add_pending_action (1): 'wifi-scan'
Mar 27 10:48:59 NetworkManager[419]: <debug> [1490604539.7195] device[0xfa8c50] (wlp2s0): wifi-scan: scheduled in 120 seconds (interval now 120 seconds)
Mar 27 10:48:59 NetworkManager[419]: <debug> [1490604539.7592] device[0xfa8c50] (wlp2s0): wifi-scan: scanning-state: scanning
Mar 27 10:49:07 NetworkManager[419]: <debug> [1490604547.8645] ndisc-lndp[0x10fd0e0,"wlp2s0"]: processing libndp events
Mar 27 10:49:08 NetworkManager[419]: <debug> [1490604548.7870] ndisc-lndp[0x10fd0e0,"wlp2s0"]: processing libndp events
Mar 27 10:49:10 NetworkManager[419]: <debug> [1490604550.6191] ndisc-lndp[0x10fd0e0,"wlp2s0"]: processing libndp events
Mar 27 10:49:13 NetworkManager[419]: <debug> [1490604553.1484] device[0xfa8c50] (wlp2s0): wifi-scan: scan-done callback: successful

While debugging the previous issue, i stumbled upon an article talking about lost connections when wifi scanning was taking place, which seems to be closely related to the issues I’m having now. So I’ll bind the BSSID on the networks I’m having issues on, and hoping for the best

Other things I tried

Start from scratch

After changing laptop a while back, I used unedited connection profiles from /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections. This may have been causing issues with invalid connection UIDS and device hardware addresses. I just deleted all my connections and I’m re-creating them from scratch. It did not make a difference at first, but may be an important factor later on.

Verify that NetworkManager connectivity check works

Then I run journalctl -u NetworkManager -f before restarting NetworkManager with systemctl restart NetworkManager and start watching the logs. The first thing I see is what configuration files are being read:

<info>  [1490522215.5734] Read config: /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf (lib: 20-connectivity.conf) (etc: 00-defaults.conf, 10-powersaving.conf

I know the settings of defaults and powersaving, but the lib: 20-connectivity.conf seems interesting. /usr/lib/NetworkManager/conf.d/20-connectivity.conf contains the following:

[connectivity]
uri=http://www.archlinux.org/check_network_status.txt

But later I find the logs says its fine:

NetworkManager[30021]: <debug> [1490522524.6651] connectivity: check: send periodic request to 'http://www.archlinux.org/check_network_status.txt'
NetworkManager[30021]: <debug> [1490522524.7821] connectivity: check for uri 'http://www.archlinux.org/check_network_status.txt' successful.

… which I can confirm by reading the CONNECTIVITY SECTION of man NetworkManager.conf

$ curl http://www.archlinux.org/check_network_status.txt
NetworkManager is online

For those interested, I have set up my own connectivity check endpoint.

References

• wpa_supplicant reason codes