Strong wifi signal but cannot connect

I’ve recently returned to the openSUSE fold after a prolonged absence. I installed openSUSE Leap 15.1 and, when at home, was able to connect to my home wifi network.

I took my laptop to the office so that I could get it to perform all necessary updates during the day but am unable to connect to the office wifi - either the secured or the open networks.

The default network manager can see the networks and appears to have a good signal - solid blue bar above the signal strength indicator. Unfortunately, this is accompanied by a yellow question mark. I can click on the signal and select the network. I get a ‘Configuring interface’ message below the chosen network, then it stops and ‘Never used’ appears below the network.

I’m pretty sure that there’s a simple solution - but I cannot for the life of me find it.

Let’s start with diagnostics…

Check that wicked and NM are both not concurrently active…

sudo systemctl status wicked
sudo systemctl status NetworkManager

If that checks out ok, then run

sudo journalctl -fu NetworkManager

Attempt to start the connection, and watch/capture the NetworkManager output. That should help with identifying what is going wrong here.

Thanks.

Wicked is not running.

I’ve tried the connection again, on the open network. The konsole window shows three or four attempts to connect:

> device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disabled -> inactive
> device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: inactive -> scanning
> device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> autheticating
> device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: autheticating -> disconnected
> device (wlan0): activation: (wifi) association took too long, failing activation
> device (wlan0): activation: state change: config -> failed (reason ‘ssid-not-found’, sys-iface-state: ‘managed’

Does this help? I can’t cut and paste the output as I’m posting using mu works PC and running the laptop separately.

Like I said, it connects without issue to my secured network at home.

Are you sure that, the office network is not checking for “known MAC addresses”?

  • A conscientious network manager nails the WLAN to only accept a known list of MAC addresses …

Which Desktop GUI are you using?
Which Network Manager widget are you using?
Is the “new” Firewall (firewalld) installed?
If yes, have installed the yast2-firewall package?
I suggest that, the WLAN interface (usually wlan0) be assigned to the “trusted” firewall zone for initial connection setup – you can change to a more secure zone once the connection setup has been successfully completed …

Have you disabled all of the following systemd services?

  • wicked.service
  • wickedd-auto4.service
  • wickedd-dhcp4.service
  • wickedd-dhcp6.service
  • wickedd-nanny.service

Could be either a Firewall issue (see above) or, the “open” network is not really open – see the “only accept known MAC addresses” comment above …

Which Firewall zone are you using for the home WLAN?

A good idea in situations like this is to save the output to a text file, and transfer via a memory stick to an an internet-connected machine. Anyway, from the last line of output you shared, the AP’s SSID is not found. So, that would explain why no connection is made. The connection profile needs to be edited or remove and start over.

BTW, you can scan for APs from the CLI with

iwlist wlan0 scan

That will at least let you check what is around.

Is the “new” Firewall (firewalld) installed?
If yes, have installed the yast2-firewall package?
I suggest that, the WLAN interface (usually wlan0) be assigned to the “trusted” firewall zone for initial connection setup – you can change to a more secure zone once the connection setup has been successfully completed …

No, the firewall has nothing to do with the wifi connection process. It’s not an IP-level process - it’s effectively layer 1.

Thanks all.

Sadly, work looks like being quite busy today so I won’t have much opportunity to look at any of the suggestions.

I thought about MAC filtering but have been able to connect other devices to the network without regsitering their MAC addresses, so that’s not the issue.

It’ll give me something to do next week… :slight_smile:

I am also facing the same problem that the signal is very strong but cannot connected.

Authorization Letter Formats

Many people have the false conception that wifi = internet. Wifi is just a wireless protocal that allows you to wirelessly send the data that you would send over an ethernet lan cable. Thus your wifi is fine, it is your internet connection that is having a problem.

While your observation that many people confuse Internet connection with Wfi connection is in general correct, I see no information above that that is the case here. Nor see I any prove that the Wifi is fine. So please read all info above carefully and when you have a useful contribution to make, please do so. What you posted now is not of much help to the OP IMHO.

As far as i know openSUSE Leap 15.1 is not yet released (ALPHA or BETA stage). It might be a better idea to use the current release (openSUSE Leap 15.0).

Regards

susejunky