How can I restore Wifi driver without internet access?

Fedora 30
My system no longer recognises the Wifi adapter. I don't have a wired network port on the laptop in question.

How it happened: The system claimed it had over 400 pending updates. I decided to install them. During the update process the internet connection was lost and the system no longer sees the Wifi adapter.

I can still access the data and have the option of reinstalling from scratch but I'd rather use this as a learning experience and try and fix it in place.

Possibly related: This was a dual boot system with Windows 10. After performing these updates I tried to boot into Windows 10 (selecting it in Grub) only to find the Windows bootloader has been deleted (I don't know when this happened as it has been a few weeks since I booted into Windows).

in such cases the first thing to do is: check logfiles like /var/log/*

Originally Posted by TiffinTime Fedora 30 My system no longer recognises the Wifi adapter. I don't have a wired network port on the laptop in question. How it happened: The system claimed it had over 400 pending updates. I decided to install them. During the update process the internet connection was lost and the system no longer sees the Wifi adapter. I can still access the data and have the option of reinstalling from scratch but I'd rather use this as a learning experience and try and fix it in place. Possibly related: This was a dual boot system with Windows 10. After performing these updates I tried to boot into Windows 10 (selecting it in Grub) only to find the Windows bootloader has been deleted (I don't know when this happened as it has been a few weeks since I booted into Windows).

No wired port? What kind of laptop is it, because it's fairly odd to not have a wired connection, or at least a dongle to enable one. You may want to try a different USB wifi adapter, (if you have access to one), to see if you can get online with different hardware. Restarting the update may fix/re-install the missing firmware/drivers/modules that the failed update was in process of removing.

How did you do the update? Not sure about Fedora anymore, but I know for openSUSE, it downloads all the packages first, then proceeds to install them. A stopped update leaves the packages on the system, and can be restarted without a conenction. Can you try running "sudo dnf upgrade", to see what happens?

Originally Posted by TB0ne No wired port? What kind of laptop is it, because it's fairly odd to not have a wired connection, or at least a dongle to enable one.

A small thin one Ethernet ports are quite bulky. I don't own a dongle unfortunately.

Originally Posted by TB0ne You may want to try a different USB wifi adapter, (if you have access to one)

Unfortunately I don't or I would have tried it.

Originally Posted by TB0ne How did you do the update? Not sure about Fedora anymore, .... Can you try running "sudo dnf upgrade", to see what happens?

I think it was dnfdragora (the dnf GUI) that suggested the updates. It's been a few weeks as I didn't have time to do anything about it when it happened. I will try your suggestion, thank you.

Originally Posted by TiffinTime A small thin one Ethernet ports are quite bulky. I don't own a dongle unfortunately.

...and does the 'small thin one' have a brand/model associated with it???

Unfortunately I don't or I would have tried it.

May want to run to a store and grab one...they're usually about $20 or so, and you can probably return it if you don't want to keep it and/or it doesn't work.

I think it was dnfdragora (the dnf GUI) that suggested the updates. It's been a few weeks as I didn't have time to do anything about it when it happened. I will try your suggestion, thank you.

Sure...if the packages are on the system, it may complete...but again, not sure for Fedora. Won't hurt to try.

Originally Posted by TiffinTime Fedora 30 My system no longer recognises the Wifi adapter. I don't have a wired network port on the laptop in question. How it happened: The system claimed it had over 400 pending updates. I decided to install them. During the update process the internet connection was lost and the system no longer sees the Wifi adapter. I can still access the data and have the option of reinstalling from scratch but I'd rather use this as a learning experience and try and fix it in place. Possibly related: This was a dual boot system with Windows 10. After performing these updates I tried to boot into Windows 10 (selecting it in Grub) only to find the Windows bootloader has been deleted (I don't know when this happened as it has been a few weeks since I booted into Windows).

try creating a menuitem in 40_custom to pick up windows trial and error maybe involved then when you get it to boot, down load your drivers then in linux access them in in windows or put them on a usb stick or how ever you can get to them.


you can use this for a guild line
https://wiki.debian.org/DualBoot/Windows10
https://ihaveabackup.net/article/gru...indows-10-uefi

After much fidling I believe my wifi adapter driver is installed and working but it appears that NetworkManager can't use it.

I can scan the available networks after issuing:

ip link set wlp0s20u5i2 up
iwlist scan

However, nmcli d shows:

wlp0s20u5i2 wifi   unmanaged  --

and issuing

nmcli d set wlp0s20u5i2 manage yes
nmcli d

just changes it to unavailable:

wlp0s20u5i2 wifi   unavailable  --

Any attempt to use nmcli to initiate a Wifi connection gives

Error: No Wi-Fi Device found.

FYI the wifi device driver is rtl8xxxu

Booting on the Fedora Live CD shows the Wifi card does actually work (and its also using the rtl8xxxu driver)

Originally Posted by TiffinTime Booting on the Fedora Live CD shows the Wifi card does actually work (and its also using the rtl8xxxu driver)

So you can connect from the liveCD ?. That's a bonus for RealTek chipsets. Install inxi (on the liveCD) and let us see "inxi -Fxz".
Try rolling back to one of your prior kernels on the on-disk install.

I have fixed it. My assumption that the driver wasn't loading was wrong. As stated above the driver was working (iwlist scan) but NetworkManager wasn't able to use it even though I could see the wifi device with 'nmcli d'

So I did:

journalctl -u NetworkManager --since "1 hour ago"

and found the line

(wlp0s20u5i2): 'wifi' plugin not available; creating generic device

A bit of searching suggested the NetworkManager-wifi package was not installed, so I used another machine, went to www.rpmfind.net and searched for NetworkManager-wifi on Fedora. This gave me NetworkManager-wifi-1.16.4-1.fc30.x86_64.rpm. I popped it on a memory stick, mounted it and did:

dnf install ./NetworkManager-wifi-1.16.4-1.fc30.x86_64.rpm --disablerepo="*"
systemctl restart NetworkManager.service

And the wifi sprang back in to life!

I'm going to work out how to image my system before I issue another update command..

hm. see post #2. do not assume, but look for some facts, an evidence...

Originally Posted by pan64 hm. see post #2. do not assume, but look for some facts, an evidence...

As a newbie I didn't know what to look for and I don't know my way around the /var/logs directory.

As you can see from my posts, I did use various tools looking for facts which lead me to suspect the Network Manager and I was able to fix the issue so I'm not sure what you're getting at.