[Discuss] Ubuntu 16.04 Wifi Connection Disappeared

[smallm at sdf.org (Mike Small)]

Nancy Allison <nancythewriter7 at gmail.com> writes:

> Preface:  I decided to use Ubuntu on my laptop as a way of thumbing my nose
> at Microsoft and Apple. Most Linux people are pretty technically savvy. Me,
> not so much.

Cool.

>
> Suddenly, my 16.04 installation doesn't connect to wifi. I am writing to
> you on my Windows 7 machine, which does successfully connect to the
> self-same wifi network.
>
> In the Ubuntu interface, I tried  disabling my home wifi network, foolishly
> thinking that Ubuntu 16.04 would successfully find it when I rebooted. No
> dice.
>
> I found a website with a long discussion of this Ubuntu 16.04 problem. I
> would type all that stuff beginning with "sudo" if I knew where to type it,
> and if I weren't afraid that I might misunderstand something, type
> something wrong, and make the situation worse.

I'll only answer this part since the Ubuntu machine I use at work is on
a wire and I'm not using its default user interface (Unity). At home I
use other things (Slackware and OpenBSD) and again not with wireless
only with an ethernet cable. So someone else will be better at directing
you to where to find error messages in the UI to diagnose better.

You can type that sudo command by first running a program named
gnome-terminal (or xterm or maybe some other programs with terminal in
the name). If I remember rightly in Ubuntu/Unity it's in the menu, maybe
only labeled as "terminal" or "gterminal". If you've ever used the
MS-DOS prompt in Windows it's kind of like that. When it comes up you
can type the command there. I assume you mean the command...

    sudo service network-manager restart

That's pretty safe to type in. While the "sudo" part does make the
command run as root (with superuser or admin privileges), a plausible
typo in the rest of the command isn't going to cause anything beyond an
error message being spat out. There are things you could type after the
sudo part that would cause severe damage but you wouldn't realistically
do that by accident trying to type this command. After you type it in
you'll be asked for a password. You enter the password of your Ubuntu
user.

>
> http://askubuntu.com/questions/762198/16-04-lts-wifi-connection-issues
>
> I would be very grateful for suggestions about how to fix the problem.

The problem the people in that thread were having may be your problem
but then again yours may be something else. They saw their issue waking
up the computer from sleep. Did your wireless work initially under
Ubuntu but then go away after putting the machine to sleep? Other
possibilities...

1. Linux, or Ubuntu in particular, doesn't support your wireless card.
If you can tell us more about the hardware you're using someone may be
able to help determine this or rule it out as a cause.

2. Some cards Linux only supports with the assistance of something
called firmware that gets loaded when the system starts up. I don't have
much experience with wireless firmware under Linux and none with Ubuntu
so maybe someone else can help here if they consider it a potential
sticking point.

3. Something more pedestrian like your wireless password not being typed
in correctly?

-- 
Mike Small
smallm at sdf.org