WiFi troubleshooting

You might occasionally run into hardware compatibility issues when running Wasta. It’s especially painful if it’s related to your WiFi device. Here’s some basic info that would be helpful to gather when troubleshooting WiFi problems (taken from a Dell XPS 13 9370):

WiFi device name

Command:

lspci | grep Network

Output:

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

Keep track of the domain number at the beginning of the output for use below:

02:

WiFi device details

Command:

lspci -v -s 02: # uses the domain number "02:" from above

Output:

02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32)
	Subsystem: Bigfoot Networks, Inc. Killer 1435 Wireless-AC
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 144
	Memory at dc000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: ath10k_pci
	Kernel modules: ath10k_pci

Note driver name from line “Kernel driver in use”:

ath10k_pci

WiFi Connection Info

Command:

iwconfig
# OR
iwconfig | sed -r 's/([0-9A-Z]{2}:){5}[0-9A-Z]{2}/<HIDDEN>/' # hides WiFi router MAC address

Output:

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlp2s0    IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"MartiWiFi"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: <HIDDEN>   
          Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=65/70  Signal level=-45 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:384   Missed beacon:0

Driver activity since last reboot in system logs

Command:

journalctl -b | grep ath10k_pci # uses driver name "ath10k_pci" from above

Output:

nov. 30 12:36:17 nate-XPS kernel: ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
nov. 30 12:36:17 nate-XPS kernel: ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: pci irq msi oper_irq_mode 2 irq_mode 0 reset_mode 0
nov. 30 12:36:17 nate-XPS kernel: ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: qca6174 hw3.2 target 0x05030000 chip_id 0x00340aff sub 1a56:143a
nov. 30 12:36:17 nate-XPS kernel: ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: kconfig debug 0 debugfs 1 tracing 1 dfs 0 testmode 0
nov. 30 12:36:17 nate-XPS kernel: ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: firmware ver WLAN.RM.4.4.1-00140-QCARMSWPZ-1 api 6 features wowlan,ignore-otp,mfp crc32 29eb8ca1
nov. 30 12:36:17 nate-XPS kernel: ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: board_file api 2 bmi_id N/A crc32 4ac0889b
nov. 30 12:36:17 nate-XPS kernel: ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: htt-ver 3.60 wmi-op 4 htt-op 3 cal otp max-sta 32 raw 0 hwcrypto 1
nov. 30 12:36:17 nate-XPS kernel: ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0 wlp2s0: renamed from wlan0
nov. 30 12:36:25 nate-XPS NetworkManager[1850]: <info>  [1638272185.0480] rfkill0: found Wi-Fi radio killswitch (at /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.2/0000:02:00.0/ieee80211/phy0/rfkill0) (driver ath10k_pci)

System kernel

Command:

uname -r

Output:

5.11.0-40-generic