WiFi Adapter not available

[xex_y]

Hi, I have looked it up but so far couldnt find anything helpful.

So basically I just installed cachyos on my old laptop, which in itself was a bit a drama. I selected to install XFCE, but ended up with KDE. I tried changing that using solutions I found on the forum, but realized my internet connection doesnt work. In fact my wireless adapter doesnt get recognized at all, although the network I used to install the OS via live session is on the list of saved networks, but because of the missing wifi adapter, it’s deactivated.

My question is, is there a way to fix it using the live usb drive? Or should I reinstall everything hoping that it will work this time?

I have restarted my laptop already. I’m running only cachyos on it.

[cscs]

Hello and welcome,

A good start would probably be;

sudo cachyos-bugreport.sh

(share the resulting link here)

[xex_y]

The problem is the device in question doesnt have any internet connection.

[cscs]

Can we use ethernet or a tethered mobile device?

Without some basic information like the status and model of the nic then troubleshooting will be infinitely more difficult.

Worst case scenario might be using a camera and uploading pics.

We would like at least the output from;

inxi -Farz

[xex_y]

does this link work? I tried it with an external drive and pastebin.

[cscs]

That works ..

Network:
  Device-1: Intel WiFi Link 5100 driver: N/A modules: iwlwifi pcie: gen: 1
    speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 06:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:4232 class-ID: 0280

Device is supported, recognized and the correct module wants to be applied but the driver is inexplicably “N/A”.
This usually means a dual-boot with windoze and that it was not shut down properly.

@xex_y

I’m running only cachyos on it.

Were you running windoze previously?
Was it shut down all the way?
Are we sure - it will not have been unless you disabled “Fast Startup” and/or performed a manual invocation to force a true shutdown.

If you no longer have windoze installed, but it was not shut down all the way .. it could still be causing these kinds of problems (really!).
I have seen people even go through a full MS reinstall to work around the issue.
But short of that you can make sure to fully depower the system entirely, no battery nothing, for some minutes .. and that should force the release of the various components.

[xex_y]

before cachyos I had fedora installed and before that ubuntu for a few years. But i’m unsure how it was before that. I will try depowering the system and report here. Thanks for taking the time

[cscs]

Oh yeah .. I skipped a more obvious one though I would not normally expect the inxi to look as it did if it was the cause.
But the ISO uses the LTS kernel and especially if this is a little older machine then it might sense to try the 6.12 LTS kernel, though of course that may be a bit of a pain without any internet connection.

[xex_y]

depowering didnt help. I decided to reinstall. Which iso can I install that is based on the kernel you mentioned?

[cscs]

All recent ISOs run on the LTS kernels but install the latest.
I believe you might have an option to install the LTS kernel as well during the package selection step of the install.

If not then you can get non-optimized packages from here:

Nginx Directory

Download the LTS kernel you need/want and it can be installed with

sudo pacman -U /path/to/package.pkg.tar.zst

[xex_y]

Thanks!

I just remembered that there was an “advanced options…” on the login page. I found an LTS version of the OS there and logged in there, which fixed the problem with wifi. Now I’m reinstalling all packages because there were some errors during the installation. Now my question is: would it be possible to fix the wifi problem from within this session?

[cscs]

@xex_y

I just remembered that there was an “advanced options…” on the login page. I found an LTS version of the OS there and logged in there, which fixed the problem with wifi. Now I’m reinstalling all packages because there were some errors during the installation. Now my question is: would it be possible to fix the wifi problem from within this session?

If the difference is the kernel then there is not a lot you can do except report it and wait for a fix to be added to the newer kernels.

You can just keep using the LTS for now.

Depending on your bootloader configuration it will be the default after becoming the most recent selection.

You could also go more extreme and remove the regular kernel and keep only the LTS but that is not necessary and you want to test from time to time maybe?

In case it is worth mentioning - you can have as many kernels installed as you like. Well .. as many as your ESP can hold.