Hey guys, not sure if this is a good place for this, so let me know if this post would be better suited elsewhere.
Also, I know, I know, make sure your device is compatible with linux-- but when Newegg said “compatible with ubuntu” I naively thought that put me in the clear. Now I know better, and I’ll be checking the wifi card compatibility. Anways, here’s the situation:
I’m running debian bookworm on an MSI Modern notebook. On every distro I’ve tried, I’ve had an issue where my wifi acts extremely inconsistently. For a while upon a fresh install of any OS, it works wihout issue. Then, after a few weeks, and especially after too much uptime, one or more of a few different issues will start happening, seemingly at random:
- The network manager will suddenly fail to detect that there is any wifi adapter installed at all. (For some reason, this can be fixed by discharging the motherboard battery and restarting).
- Wifi networks will be visible, but will not be able to authenticate, even with correct credentials. This can occur even with unsecured wifi networks. (The time before last that this happened, it randomly fixed itself).
After about two weeks of using my system after it magically fixed itself, the wifi adapter stopped being recognized, so I did the motherboard discharge and reboot, and when I could access the wifi settings again, the authentication issue had reappeared. After several days of use, it hasn’t fixed itself. So now I’m posting here, after many months of being unable to figure out a good solution.
I’ve tried and failed to troubleshoot this problem over many hours. Some related issues/factors that might help explain what the problem is:
- After some research, I’ve noted that other people have had problems with the wifi card in this laptop (MEDIATEK MT7921K (RZ608) Wi-Fi 6E 80MHz).
- Despite debian supporting secure boot, if I ever try to enable secure boot, I am given a “secure boot violation”.
If anyone could help me get pointed in the right direction, show me what I could potentially reinstall or reset without having to reinstall my OS every time this happens, I would super appreciate it. And of course if I didn’t include some spec please let me know and I’ll update this post with the necessary spec.
That sounds like the firmware on the wireless adapter crashed. Disconnecting the power and powering it up again would probably boot a fresh copy of the firmware. Check the output of
dmesgand other system logs right after the adapter dies, maybe that’ll give you a hint of what’s going on.That could be a firmware bug as well.
For the WiFi issue, I’d recommend finding firmware updates or installing a better WiFi card if no firmware is available. Firmware updates may need to be installed through Windows if fwupdmgr doesn’t list any updates. It could be that the problem is with buggy firmware that crashes because the driver does something unexpected, which would mask the bug in Windows (so for most people).
MSI had its signing keys leaked so it’s possible they’ve loaded up their new laptops with new keys. The signed Debian bootloader may not be signed with a key these devices trust. I’m also not sure if the Microsoft secure boot vulnerability has altered the key store somehow.
Either way, your laptop isn’t trusting the certificate that signed the Debian installer. If you want to use secure boot, you’ll have to use your own, custom keys (and the Microsoft key if you want to boot Windows).
Wow thank you so much for the insights and advice. This is exactly the kind of thing I was trying to find but didn’t have the knowledge to know what to search. I’ll look into these!