Ubuntu - No Wifi Fix

Today I moved my desktop computer's SSD into a laptop. This resulted in ubuntu booting up normally, but I didn't have any wifi access. My desktop computer does not have a wifi device, so it was never configured to do so. Also, I know that I manually set a lot of network configurations for static IPs and bridges, that were no longer applicable and were probably interfering. Here are the steps I took to resolve the issue.

Wifi Blocking/Disabled

Most laptops have the ability to disable/enable your Wifi through a keyboard shortcut or a physical switch. Run the command below to check whether your wifi device has been disabled in such a way.

rfkill list

If everything is fine, you should see output similar to below

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

Network Configuration

Update your

/etc/network/interfaces

file so that the only lines that are not commented out are as follows:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Managed Network Manager

In

/etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf

, change

managed=false

to

managed=true

.

Restart

After running all the previous steps, restart the computer and your wifi should start working with the network manager appearing in the system tray.

References

• Ubuntu Forums - no nm-applet, couldn't initialize...