My Laptop automatically disconnects from wifi

Question

My laptop is running Ubuntu 14.04. It automatically disconnects from wifi after 4-5 minutes. After that it refuses to reconnect. I then turn off and on the wifi of the laptop from the hardware key. After several tries it connects somehow. I've already read thisand this but couldn't solve the problem.

Here is the output of lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net:

02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:0621]
        Kernel driver in use: wl

(I don't know what the above command does. I've read in those questions that you ask for its output.) Help me out if you know what is the issue?

This command shows your wireless adapter model and the driver in use. — Pilot6, Jul 13 '15 at 17:08
@Pilot6: Ok thanks! I believe I should have focused more in my shell scripting class. :-) — Raman, Jul 13 '15 at 17:14
Try to run sudo modprobe -r ideapad_laptop and test it again. But do not reboot. — Pilot6, Jul 13 '15 at 17:15
If it does not, I will write a solution to make it permanent. — Pilot6, Jul 13 '15 at 17:25
@Pilot6, Sure but let me wait for 20-30 minutes more.. Or should I try disconnecting and reconnecting it? If it connects in first attempt, probably it would be solved? — Raman, Jul 13 '15 at 17:29

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 13 '15 at 18:06

It looks like you have problems with ideapad_laptop module.

This module is responsible for platform specific features one of them is handling wireless blocking and unblocking.

Lately some bugs have been reported for some Lenovo laptops. Some of them have been fixed, some are not even reported.

First of all I suggest upgrading kernel to 3.19. It will install a newer ideapad_laptop. There is a chance that this issue is fixed there.

To upgrade the kernel run in terminal

sudo apt-get install linux-generic-lts-vivid

and reboot.

Then test your wireless network for a while.

If the problem persists, you can permanently disable ideapad_laptop module by running

sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ideapad_laptop.conf <<< "blacklist ideapad_laptop"

This must solve the problem.

This setting can be always reverted by

sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ideapad_laptop.conf

If upgrading kernel does not solve the problem I suggest reporting the bug to launchpad. You will need to remove the blacklist and run in terminal

ubuntu-bug linux

and follow the directions.

This will help to solve this problem for everyone. You can post link to the bug here.

My Laptop automatically disconnects from wifi

1 Answers1