Fedora 20: dropping wifi

[jd1008]

On 08/12/2015 01:07 PM, Max Pyziur wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Aug 2015, jd1008 wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 08/12/2015 09:27 AM, Max Pyziur wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>>>>
>>>> System -> Preferences -> Look and Feel -> Screen Saver
>>>>
>>>> From that gui, click on Power Management
>>>> Be sure to check all 4 tabs of the Power Management Gui.
>>>>
>>>> R U running on battery most of the time?
>>>
>>> I would like to echo the problem that Henrik is having.
>>>
>>> The Wifi on my Dell Laptop (D630) has been dropping ever since I 
>>> installed Fedora on it (initially F18; now F21). No matter which 
>>> Fedora version, the Wifi connection eventually drops, can be 
>>> restored a few times w/ systemctl restart NetworkManager
>>>
>>> and then eventually drops.
>>>
>>> I too would like to find a way of restoring and maintaining the Wifi 
>>> connection w/o rebooting.
>>>
>>> ..... Rest snipped .....
>>>
>> The D630, and possibly the OP's laptop are old.
>> On windows systems, there is (was) a configure menu that turned off 
>> power management of the wifi,
>> so that the wifi would always remain on.
>> On Linux, you can disable power management by running
>> iwconfig <interface-name> power off
>>
>> Yeah ... I know .. it sounds as if you want to power it off.
>> That is not the meaning of it. It turns off power management,
>> so it will always be ON.
>>
>
> Much thanks for the reply; here are my results:
> root at mercury ~> ifconfig wlan0
> wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
>         inet 192.168.1.10  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
>         inet6 fe80::21e:4cff:fe3b:9477  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
>         ether 00:1e:4c:3b:94:77  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
>         RX packets 583519  bytes 123081532 (117.3 MiB)
>         RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
>         TX packets 876057  bytes 1232935812 (1.1 GiB)
>         TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
>
> root at mercury ~> iwconfig wlan0
> wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"brama"
>           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 
> 00:0F:B5:38:51:BC
>           Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=30 dBm
>           Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
>           Encryption key:off
>           Power Management:off
>           Link Quality=63/70  Signal level=-47 dBm
>           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
>           Tx excessive retries:14347  Invalid misc:7057   Missed beacon:0
>
> root at mercury ~> iwconfig wlan0 power off
> Error for wireless request "Set Power Management" (8B2C) :
>     SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not supported.
>
>
> It seems that "Power Management" is already set to "off."
I am not sure that it is already set to off.
Operation not supported is an issue in the drivers, such as
brcmsmac
cfg80211
bcma
wext

wext is the wireless extensions driver.

On my machine, also not supported. To wit:
# iwconfig wlp2s0 power off
Error for wireless request "Set Power Management" (8B2C) :
     SET failed on device wlp2s0 ; Operation not supported.

So it is primarily a driver issue, or it is a device firmware issue.
Sometimes if the device itself does not provide for a command to
turn power management off, then the driver itself will not support
such a command.

You might want to ask the linux wireless mailing list at
linux-wireless at vger.kernel.org

Of course, you must subscribe first.