Open KloudKoder opened 4 years ago
rotemgb
commented
4 years ago I have the same issue. It won't connect to a mobile hotspot. My mobile will show as if my laptop is connected, but my laptop will show that it's not.
I'm using pop os 20.04 on a dell xps 15 machine. The hotspot have worked on other laptops with different os, so it's not a problem with my mobile or provider.
Can someone please advice? Thanks
KloudKoder
commented
4 years ago I think rotemgb's issue is different. I found that my hotspot issue was due to something other than Pop!_OS. However, the wifi interface is still buggy. Try connecting to a wifi, then in the middle of the handshake, connecting to another one. Or plug in some USB wifi dongles and rotate among them, handshaking then aborting all over the place. In short, do the quality assurance work that should have been done by the wifi UI developers. As it stands, this interface is slow, faulty, and an embarrassment to whoever wrote it.
mmstick
commented
4 years ago Sounds hardware-specific. What is the Wifi card?
KloudKoder
commented
4 years ago Let's just say that it's clear that the wifi UI hasn't been sufficiently tested, especially when switching between wifi devices, and SSIDs, in the middle of trying to connect to another one. It should be robust enough to drop one handshake and connect to another SSID -- or even the same SSID via another device -- immediately. At best, it's incredibly slow, given the tiny amount of information which needs to be exchanged. At worst, it just doesn't work and necessitates a reboot. I would recommend debugging this with an old laptop which adds a lot of latency and will potentially expose more bugs. Likewise, perhaps try to connect to a very slow router or with fewer bars. (I have 5 bars, but perhaps doing so would shake out other issues, like recovery during handshake involving packet damage.)
This isn't a hardware issue. It simply works better with some wifi chipsets, worse with others. Bottom line: wifi should work like USB, plugging, unplugging, and interrupting handshakes all over the place, without ever losing the ability to recover rapidly and connect properly.
Another possibly related issue is that, if you disable wifi in the firmware setup (or physically disconnect it from the motherboard), Pop!_OS installation can't complete. It just hangs after the first reboot, presumably waiting for a wifi device that never appears. There are lots of reasons why one might want to run an offline machine, especially during installation.
Finally, I notice that sometimes the UI opens a dialog that asks for a password, and other times, it pops up a notification at the top of the screen saying that the wifi requires a password. The first way is obvious. The second way just looks like an error message, and you have to click on it in order to enter a password. Totally awkward.
Distribution (run
cat /etc/os-release):20.04
Related Application and/or Package Version (run
apt policy $PACKAGE NAME):Wifi selector
Issue/Bug Description:
I've seen this on Pop!_OS machines from different manufacturers, where even the wifi vendors are different. It happens with iPhone and Android alike, with different network providers. It's universal to Pop!_OS, so far as I can see. It's definitely not a WAN issue, as the phone's own internet connection is always working fine while the failure is happening. The bug has several modes, perhaps indicative of different problems.
Rebooting Pop!_OS doesn't fix it. Deleting all the known wifis sometimes fixes it, sometimes not. This is what happens:
Sometimes, after you double click on YourWifiSSID, the password dialog either never comes up or takes like a hundred times too long, relative to non-Linux devices, even though the phone is right next to the machine. It just sits there doing that whirling thing.
Sometimes, after successfully connecting to the wifi, your browser will just hang forever trying to contact a website. Even the ping command doesn't get a response.
If you switch back to non-hotspot wifi from a standard landline router, everything works fine. I didn't test Ethernet, but it probably works fine too.
If the wind is blowing in the right direction, you can connect to a hotspot just fine. Infuriatingly, I've had several days of flawless performance, only to have the bug resurface later, for hours on end.
I've been chasing this for a long, long time, but I've given up because it's so random yet so persistent.
Steps to reproduce (if you know):
Set up a wifi hotspot on your phone. Try to connect to it with the Wifi selector in the system settings. If it works, try it again later, maybe after a reboot of either or both devices. Distribution (run
cat /etc/os-release):20.04
Related Application and/or Package Version (run
apt policy $PACKAGE NAME):Wifi selector
Issue/Bug Description:
I've seen this on Pop!_OS machines from different manufacturers, where even the wifi vendors are different. It happens with iPhone and Android alike, with different network providers. It's universal to Pop!_OS, so far as I can see. It's definitely not a WAN issue, as the phone's own internet connection is always working fine while the failure is happening. The bug has several modes, perhaps indicative of different problems.
Rebooting Pop!_OS doesn't fix it. Deleting all the known wifis sometimes fixes it, sometimes not. This is what happens:
Sometimes, after you double click on YourWifiSSID, the password dialog either never comes up or takes like a hundred times too long, relative to non-Linux devices, even though the phone is right next to the machine. It just sits there doing that whirling thing.
Sometimes, after successfully connecting to the wifi, your browser will just hang forever trying to contact a website. Even the ping command doesn't get a response.
If you switch back to non-hotspot wifi from a standard landline router, everything works fine. I didn't test Ethernet, but it probably works fine too.
If the wind is blowing in the right direction, you can connect to a hotspot just fine. Infuriatingly, I've had several days of flawless performance, only to have the bug resurface later, for hours on end.
I've been chasing this for a long, long time, but I've given up because it's so random yet so persistent.
Steps to reproduce (if you know):
Set up a wifi hotspot on your phone. Try to connect to it with the Wifi selector in the system settings. If it works, try it again later, maybe after a reboot of either or both devices.
Expected behavior:
Connect to the wifi properly and quickly.
Other Notes:
The Wifi selector is a generally unreliable interface. It should let you switch connections rapidly, even if you're in the middle of connecting to a different wifi. It just seems like nobody really tested it. That's absurd after so many years and so many frustrated users. Someone needs to beat the hell out of it until it doesn't fail anymore.