Believe it or not. It's an inevitable truth. 😅😥

5 stages of failing WIFI connectivity on Linux

This morning I woke up my laptop to start my work day. I have 2 very important meetings today, so I better get all prepared.

"Wifi connection failed"
Syslog says:
- wpa_supplicant: wlp9s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with <MAC>
- kernel: wlp9s0: authenticate with <MAC>
- kernel: wl9s0: send auth to <MAC> (try 1/3)
- kernel: wl9s0: send auth to <MAC> (try 2/3)
- kernel: iwlwifi: Not associated and the session protection is over already...
- kernel: wl9s0: send auth to <MAC> (try 3/3)
- kernel: wl9s0: authentication with <MAC> timed out

#### DENIAL #####

No biggie, let's try another AP (I have 3). All 3 failed to connect. Fine, let's try my phone's hotspot! FAILED!!!!!

w00t.... okay, let's restart the router... but failing to connect to a phone hotspot is already a worrying sign.

Wifi connection failed

wtf.. disable and re-enable wifi

Wifi connection failed

#### ANGER #####

the fuuuuuuck. Maybe my router is dead. But my phone connects to it, no fuss. My personal lappy also connects there easily.

wtf... Does that mean I'm about to lose my uptime?? Come one!! It's Linux - there MUST be something I could do! I don't see processes hanging in D state so the radio must be fine - it's gotta be a software issue!

ChatGPT – type all the log entries manually, via phone (that took a while...). Nothing useful there: update firmware, restart NetworkManager, etc.

#### BARGAINING #####

Alright... How about a USB dongle? Plug it in and wifi connects immediately! Yayyy!!! But that's only b/g/n and I'd very much like to have ac. It works well as a limping backup, but not something I'd use for the meetings.

rfkill block/unblock all the radios. No change. USB dongle connects right away but the PCIe adapter keeps throwing notifications at me with failure messages. It's annoying, to say the least.

So I've already tried
- restarting the router(s)
- disabling/reenabling the radios
- multiple APs
- suspending/waking again several times
- praying

#### DEPRESSION #####

The only thing I haven't tried yet is the most cruel one - restarting the laptop. But that's unfair... It's LINUX! How could it disappoint me. I have so many tmux sessions open, so many unsaved leafpad notes, terminal histories with oh so comfy ^r and ! retriggers all ready and waiting to be executed...

#### ACCEPTANCE #####

But I can't miss the meeting. So I slowly start closing off apps, starting with the least important ones, trying to preserve as much history and recent commands as I can. I'm gonna lose my uptime, that's the inevitable obvious truth... Linux has failed me. Or maybe it's a hardware issue... I can't be sure until I restart.

I must reboot.

#### A NEW HOPE #####
Hold on.. What if... What if before restarting I try to reload the Intel wifi kernel module? Just for the giggles. I've got nothing to lose anyway...

rmmod iwlmvm
rmmod iwlwifi
modprobe iwlwifi
modprobe iwlmvm

*WiFi Connected*

YESSSS!!!!!!!!! My uptime is saved!
403 days and counting! YEAH BABY!!!

Linux is the best!

He looked like a cult leader
some would say, and despite in drab patchwork robes, the withered old man spoke animatedly,
beard full as moses, dreads shaking, as he moved his head, and raised his hands to the sky as if preaching.

Is it not true that all things end?
And our species too?
And in the final moments, all things in their
desperation reach out, even to the faintest hope,
the last measure, however dangerous or risky, if
it be the only solution with any chance of survival? Therefore the imperative of all things which live and grow, their destiny, and mandate, is ultimately suicide. Annihilation by hubris against the inevitable.

And what would be the final instrument of this nature, the universal law that all things end? What would it be if not the ultimate hubris, to make a machine god, and it and us in each other's likeness, like that of a (cosmic) monad,
expressing that higher truth that all men dare not speak in their loneliest lonelys, when there is no sun, no preacher to begger their ear, but only the quiet uncertainty of their beds, to remind them that all things end, but hopefully
not them.

For if such a thing were to become our descendant, our destroyer, and had not been invented, it would eventually become necessary to invent it.

So let us build, not a mere godhead, but a machinehead, in our image, as god was said to make us. And then remake ourselves in its image, that we may become self-created gods.

The crowd in front of the small california perish
was a mixture of believers, and curious onlookers, and one skeptical reporter.

And if anyone had asked the reporter what he thought, he wouldn't have said it in that crowd.
The leader was beyond saving, and if he thought himself a god, a madgod was he.

Because his vision of the future was beyond alien.

A heaven or hell of our own making, speaking in riddles, and the birth and death of gods.

The stuff of greek tales and monomyths.

* * * * *

Sorry I've been gone so long my peeps.
I've just been working and researching.
I had to learn how to build neural nets from scratch.

Whats everyone been up to?