Wifi scans but fails to connect on Thinkpad W520

Question

Running Network Manager on a Lenovo Thinkpad W520 and able to scan but unable to connect to wifi.  Wifi works fine in dualboot on Windows, and ethernet works fine in both.
$ lspci -vv
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (rev 35)
Subsystem: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 3x3 AGN
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 35
Region 0: Memory at d5300000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
$ sudo systemctl status NetworkManager-wait-online.service
● NetworkManager-wait-online.service - Network Manager Wait Online
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager-wait-online.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2014-12-21 22:58:55 EST; 12min ago
Main PID: 500 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Dec 21 22:58:55 Defiant systemd[1]: NetworkManager-wait-online.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Dec 21 22:58:55 Defiant systemd[1]: Failed to start Network Manager Wait Online.
Dec 21 22:58:55 Defiant systemd[1]: Unit NetworkManager-wait-online.service entered failed state.
Dec 21 22:58:55 Defiant systemd[1]: NetworkManager-wait-online.service failed.
$ sudo systemctl status NetworkManager-dispatcher.service
● NetworkManager-dispatcher.service - Network Manager Script Dispatcher Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager-dispatcher.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: inactive (dead)
$ sudo systemctl status NetworkManager.service
● NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2014-12-21 22:58:23 EST; 13min ago
Main PID: 341 (NetworkManager)
CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service
└─341 /usr/bin/NetworkManager --no-daemon
Dec 21 23:10:12 Defiant NetworkManager[341]: <info> Activation (wlp3s0) Stage 4 of 5 (IPv6 Configure Timeout) started...
Dec 21 23:10:12 Defiant NetworkManager[341]: <info> (wlp3s0): device state change: ip-config -> failed (reason 'ip-config-unavailable') [70 120 5]
Dec 21 23:10:12 Defiant NetworkManager[341]: <info> Disabling autoconnect for connection 'Bifröst'.
Dec 21 23:10:12 Defiant NetworkManager[341]: <warn> Activation (wlp3s0) failed for connection 'Bifröst'
Dec 21 23:10:12 Defiant NetworkManager[341]: <info> Activation (wlp3s0) Stage 4 of 5 (IPv6 Configure Timeout) complete.
Dec 21 23:10:12 Defiant NetworkManager[341]: <info> (wlp3s0): device state change: failed -> disconnected (reason 'none') [120 30 0]
Dec 21 23:10:12 Defiant NetworkManager[341]: <info> (wlp3s0): deactivating device (reason 'none') [0]
Dec 21 23:10:12 Defiant NetworkManager[341]: <warn> Connection disconnected (reason -3)
Dec 21 23:10:12 Defiant NetworkManager[341]: <info> (wlp3s0): supplicant interface state: completed -> disconnected
Dec 21 23:10:15 Defiant NetworkManager[341]: <warn> Could not get scan request result: Scan request rejected
Additionally, after stopping NetworkManager and trying wifi-menu, it scans correctly but fails to connect, never even prompting for a passphrase.
So I tried wpa_supplicant on its own:
$ sudo wpa_supplicant -B -i wlp3s0 -c <(wpa_passphrase "Bifr\xc3\xb6st" "mypassword")
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
wlp3s0: failed to initialize driver interface
For good measure:
$ rfkill list
0: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
2: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
$ ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp0s25: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether f0:de:f1:62:13:b8 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 10.0.0.11/24 brd 10.0.0.255 scope global enp0s25
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: wlp3s0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:24:d7:c6:ab:48 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
I'm at a loss. and I've googled my little heart out.  Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Welcome to the forums - and thanks for a great initial post, all the needed information seems to be here.
Specifically, the following error from wpa_supplicant will most likely be best to dig into:
wlp3s0: failed to initialize driver interface
I see several results of this error in a google search, but none of them quickly translated into solutions yet.  To get some more information on it, could you run the same wpa_supplicant command, but with the verbose debugging flag "-dd" and post the ouput here?
I don't have a intel wireless card, so I don't know what the diagnostic signs are for the problem addressed in the wiki, but you may want to try the modprobe options shown in this section of the wiki.
EDIT: there is a similar but unresolved thread on these forums here which points to using the -D flag for wpa_supplicant to specify other drivers.  I was thinking this too upon my first reading, but I don't fully understand what these are so I was reluctant to suggest it.  It certainly can't hurt anything to use the command in the wiki to see which drivers are available, then try each one.
EDIT 2: and this thread seems to indicate that the -D flag driver specification is the right solution.  So start here with the -D flag and only if that fails follow up with my initial debugging suggestions.
Last edited by Trilby (2014-12-22 12:52:13)