[SOLVED] Gentoo refusing to connect to WiFi network

Sarcutus · Last edited by Sarcutus on Tue Aug 04, 2020 1:05 am; edited 1 time in total

Hello everyone.

You can probably guess that I'm new to Gentoo. And of course, I'm having problems with it (as newbies will). I'll only post one of them here for now.

Every time I try to connect to my WiFi network, I get output saying that the connection is dormant/inactive/down. Unfortunately I don't have that output memorized, or I'd post it here. I've used ip addr. ifconfig, wpa_cli, iw and wpa_supplicant. All say the same thing: the network connection is somehow inactive.

Also, ifconfig and ip addr can't detect an IPv4 address for my wireless network. They detect an IPv6 address, but no IPv4.

The messages include something about BROADCAST, MULTICAST but never indicate a connection.

And it's not as if the network isn't being detected. Gentoo can see the network. It just doesn't want to connect.

I'll understand if no one wants to help, but would deeply appreciate any help anyone has to offer.

Thanks.

-- Michael

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2020 3:48 pm Post subject:

Sarcutus,

Welcome to Gentoo.

We need to see the output of the dmesg command from your gentoo.
There is lots of it, so it needs to go to a pastebin site.

If you can use wired networking meanwhile,

Sarcutus · Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 7:46 pm Post subject: dmesg output

Thank you for the help. Here we go:

https://dpaste.com/FA8WQNKKS

Hope it's informative.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:25 pm Post subject:

Sarcutus,

You Wifi was found

Sarcutus · Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2020 2:32 am Post subject: Success

Well, it might be redundant or unwanted, but I'm hoping not.

I ended up having to reinstall Gentoo from the ground up. In doing so, I discovered that I'd missed a lot of steps in the process. This helped me get a rather better running system, but it didn't solve the problem mentioned above.

All I really had to do was Google "how to use wpa_supplicant." That's literally all I had to do.

I found the correct command to use to initialize it at:

https://shapeshed.com/linux-wifi/

Then I used

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2020 7:54 am Post subject:

Sarcutus,

Its really difficult to mess up Gentoo so badly that a reinstall is the only way.
Sometimes the reinstall is faster than fixing what you have but fixing what you have is a much better educational experience :)
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

UberLord · Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2020 8:33 am Post subject:

Sarcutus · Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2020 1:02 pm Post subject:

Yeah, I won't go into what had me reinstall Gentoo, but I basically both reinstalled Gentoo and fixed the original problem (the problem still popped up after the reinstall). I realized after the reinstall and solving the issue that I didn't need to reinstall to solve the original problem (another problem popped up that required a reinstall), but I'm actually glad I reinstalled because it gave me a better view on what to do right. Like picking the right tarball and the right system profile. Plus the practice didn't hurt.