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NerdOfLinux
Asked: 2018-04-27 17:06:45 +0800 CST

nmcli the WiFi network could not be found

  • 772

I'm running a headless device that I want to connect to wifi(it's currently on ethernet), so I'm using nmcli. I scan for connections with the following:

sudo nmcli dev wifi rescan
sudo nmcli dev wifi list

and the WiFi network I want is at 95% strength. So, I connect with:

sudo nmcli dev wifi connect "SSID" password "wifipassword"

and I get the following error:

Error: Connection activation failed: (53) The Wi-Fi network could not be found.

and I've tried copying and pasting from list to ensure I did not mistype the SSID, and it still does not work. It works fine from other devices that use Ubuntu and network-manager, so I know it's not the router.

How can it not find the network when I connect, but find it just fine when scanning, and how do I fix this?

network-manager nmcli

5 Answers

  1. this one fixed the issue for me - https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/519620/407616
    add this 

    [device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

    to /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
    then run 

    sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

    then you can connect to the ssid by

    sudo nmcli dev wifi connect "SSID" password "wifipassword"
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  2. Best Answer

    I never found a fix for the issue, but I believe I found the problem. I was using a virtual interface made with

    sudo iw dev wlan0 interface add ap0 type __ap

    to host a WiFi network, but ap0 and wlan0 had the same MAC address. Due to a problem with the RPi3 drivers, I couldn't change the MAC address(I tried macchanged -e ap0), but if I figured out how to, I'm pretty sure the issue would have been resolved.

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  3. Try this without password

    sudo nmcli dev wifi connect "SSID"
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  4. When I tried to connect a rather old a/b/g WiFi client to a mixed WPA 2 + WPA 3 WiFi network, I stumbled upon this problem, too. I guessed that maybe NM was not able to figure out the right settings for such an environment, so I ran nmcli connection edit <BSSID> and then configured the following settings:

    • set connection.metered no
    • set 802-11-wireless.band bg
    • set 802-11-wireless-security.key-mgmt wpa-psk

    (Do not forget to save, before you exit)

    Pretty sure the first setting can be ignored, however the connection is stable for several days now and even when I reboot the router or the device, the connection is being reestablished right away.

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  5. I face this issue in the past and tried lost of tips. But this solution worked for me on my Ubuntu 20.04:

    Improve WiFi connection by disabling power management for the wireless card

    sudo sed -i 's/3/2/' /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf

    Then restart the computer

    NB: The Wi-Fi power-saving mode is a built-in mode that allows devices to save power by analyzing the data usage pattern with time and then making sure that the Wi-Fi doesn’t drain too much battery of the device in question. But there is a need to be cautious, too, since this can affect your browsing experience.

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