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Accepted
leo
Asked: 2018-05-30 06:41:14 +0800 CST

How do I disable the PCI wifi and use only a USB wifi card?

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I have a laptop with a built-in network card that stopped working. Until upgrading to Ubuntu 18.04, I could use a USB card instead, but in Gnome it seems I can not enable/disable the network interfaces one by one. If I connect to a network both interfaces try to connect, leaving the system without a working condition.

For reference, here is an old question on how to disable a network interface permanently, but that seems to work only for older Ubuntu versions: How to disable built-in wifi and use only USB wifi card?

Edit: 

$ lspci -nnk | grep net

<snip>

02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) [168c:002b] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Lite-On Communications Inc AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) [11ad:6613]
networking 18.04

2 Answers

  1. I had a similar problem and my solution was to go in the settings of my pci network card and make it forget all of my networks so it won't connect automatically. That way my usb dongle connects automatically to the network and my pci network card stays unconnected but it's still functionnal if need be.

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  2. Best Answer

    You ran the terminal command:

    lspci -nnk

    You found your wireless device:

    Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) [168c:002b]

    We search for the device ID 168c:002b and find, among others: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Arcadyan_WN7811A

    It reports:

    Probable Linux driver ath9k

    You can verify that this is the module that is loaded with:

    lsmod | grep ath

    If so, let's unload and blacklist the driver:

    sudo -i
modprobe -r ath9k
echo "blacklist ath9k"  >>  /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
exit

    You should be all set.

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