Ralink RT5390 wifi issues on Focal 20.04

**pemartins** · August 13th, 2020

I'm having wifi issues, often losing connection and/or the connection stops working after a while.

I've already made the procedures recommended a while ago here https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2341569 for the same laptop, yet another Ubuntu version. It improved a lot but still it is not fine yet.

Here's the paste of the wireless-info report:

Code:

https://pastebin.com/raw/uiK4Q9Ut

Is there something that can be done to improve it?

Thank you very much for any help in advance.

**pemartins** · August 23rd, 2020

I was able to solve my issues in the Kubuntu forum, will paste here all the tweaks in the hope that it will be useful to someone else.

1- Changed wifi router settings, moved to channel 9 and changed encryption to WPA2-AES with no WEP or TKIP.

2- Set wifi power save to off:

Code:

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

3- Set my country code, which is PT:

Code:

sudo iw reg set PT
sudo sed -i 's/^REG.*=$/&PT/' /etc/default/crda

4- Set nohwcrypt to zero:

Code:

echo "options rt2800pci nohwcrypt=0" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rt2800pci.conf
sudo modprobe -rfv rt2800pci
sudo modprobe -v rt2800pci

5- Installed resolvconf, set cloudfare's dns to be used because is the faster one for me, created a file named resolv_cloudfare.conf in etc containing solely the cloudfare dns (this is not clever but it stops network manager from overwriting resolv.conf) and linked the resolv.conf file to it and (re)started the service:

Code:

sudo apt-get install resolvconf
echo "nameserver 1.1.1.1" | sudo tee -a /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head > /dev/null
echo "nameserver 1.1.1.1" | sudo tee /etc/resolv_cloudfare.conf > /dev/null
sudo mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.bak
sudo ln -s /etc/resolv_cloudfare.conf /etc/resolv.conf
sudo systemctl restart resolvconf.service
sudo modprobe -rfv rt2800pci
sudo modprobe -v rt2800pci

6- Stopped and disabled systemd-resolved:

Code:

sudo systemctl stop systemd-resolved
sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved

7- Disabled ipv6:

Code:

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1
sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=1

8- Set IPv4 precedence over IPv6 by uncommenting #precedence ::ffff:0:0/96 100 in the file /etc/gai.conf

9- Since I use tlp, I made sure tlp was setting the wifi power save always to off by editing /etc/tlp.conf:

Code:

WIFI_PWR_ON_AC=off
WIFI_PWR_ON_BAT=off

10- On the wifi connection I applied these tweaks:

Code:

Wifi
Restricted to device (MAC address do modem)

IPv4
Method: Manual
DNS: 1.1.1.1,1.0.0.1
Address: 192.168.1.7
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1

IPv6
Method: Ignored

11- I installed an application with gui for easily install/remove kernels named Mainline and installed the latest release of kernel 4.20. And applied the tweaks concerning the kernel again.

12- And, why not... I even discovered an amazing web browser called Waterfox and it is probably the fastest web browser around these days (it's based on Firefox so all the addons are there). It is now my default browser.

That was about it.

**pemartins** · August 26th, 2020

Turns out the issue is not solved, even after all that stuff I did the connection still loses ip randomly. It happens mostly while streaming or downloading.