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I'm running Lenovo ThinkCenter M-725s with Ryzen Pro 2400g and Realtek rtl8818ce wifi card.

In my previous installation of Ubuntu 19.10 I encountered persistent connectivity issues. So given that 20.04 was coming out, I went the nuclear option, backed up my files, and installed a completely fresh stock 20.04. The install went fine and has no issues apart from this one.

No connectivity works. No wifi, no USB tethering via Android, no bluetooth. I can transfer files over bluetooth, but no internet.

It's curious, when I tether it says it's connected, then the icon in the top bar appears, but with a question mark. Same with bluetooth: it is recognized and present, it says it is connected, but there is no connection happening.

Normally the Realtek wifi card requires a special driver installation, which I did in my previous build. See this related question. However it is hard to do that now, as it requires dependencies I don't have. Recently there is support for this driver enabled via Software and Updates --> additional drivers, but that is not available on my PC.

But it seems that the issue must be something else. Lack of wifi driver should not affect tethering or bluetooth, unless I am mistaken. Like I said, I have been having issues prior to this, and it seems like there's been a progressive falling apart of the connectivity, now it's just gone. Could this be a hardware issue? If so, how do I test this, and what kind of fix should I be looking for?

rfkill list shows bluetooth unblocked, and does not show anything else.

Here's a paste of my syslog errors.

And here's a paste of my network hardware

sujato
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1 Answers1

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I managed to solve the problem.

  1. Here it explains that the question mark on the wifi or ethernet icon can be caused by Ubuntu's "Settings > Privacy > Connectivity Checking". Disable that and the question mark goes away, showing full connectivity.
  2. However the internet still didn't work. Hmm. With my Android phone connected via USB-C, and tethering enabled, I turned off the wifi on my phone, so it is only using mobile data. Success! Why doesn't it work via wifi? Still don't know, but at least I have something.
  3. Now I can download and install the rtl8818ce driver and enable it in "Software & Updates > Additional Drivers". Wifi on my machine works now.
sujato
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