Issue connecting to university wifi through networkmanager

30 September 2024, 11:15:13

Hi,
I am running artix linux with runit as my init system, and have installed networkmanager for networking, along with the runit package for it.
I have been trying to connect to my uni's wifi and have 100% packet loss on pinging any server.
I am confident that this is not a dns resolving issue, as I can ping localhost, and when using

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ping artixlinux.org

i see the right ip address printed on screen:

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PING artixlinux.org (104.21.79.75) 56(84) bytes of data.

but I never get any packets back and when stopping the process with ^C i get:

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16 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 15212ms

and pings to ip addresses get 100% packet loss as well.
Also, networkmanager shows the network as if it is succesfully connected to it, as

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nmcli connection show

returns the network's name highlighted in green just like my other working networks when the system is connected to them.

One thing to note is that being very lazy, I used the configuration file in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ALMAWIFI.nmconnection from another system I have on an usb key, from a fedora system with networkmanager as well, and have edited the file so as to correct the path for the usertrust certificate and the interface name. The file was generated on the same hardware, a macbook air from 2013, with all the correct drivers installed for the broadcom card. This is the configuration file:

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[connection]
id=ALMAWIFI
uuid=8b1d7995-0363-4094-ad2d-e36ea01cde8e
type=wifi
interface-name=wlan0

[wifi]
mode=infrastructure
ssid=ALMAWIFI

[wifi-security]
key-mgmt=wpa-eap

[802-1x]
ca-cert=/home/mogus/downloads/certificate/SHA-2 Root USERTrust RSA Certification Authority.crt
eap=peap;
[email protected]
password=redacted
phase2-auth=mschapv2

[ipv4]
method=auto

[ipv6]
addr-gen-mode=default
method=auto

[proxy]

this configuration works on the fedora system, on the same hardware (the fedora system is from a usb drive).
Thanks in advance for the help!

Re: Issue connecting to university wifi through networkmanager

Reply #1 – 15 October 2024, 18:41:27

I ended up talking to a friend of mine with much more networking experience than me, turns out that:
My uni's servers did not allow pinging, therefore the pings failed even though I was succesfully connected
I couldn't connect to any websites through firefox because I had a custom dns resolver configured, and it didn't work correctly with the uni's servers
Changing the firefox dns resolver settings solved everything and I feel really dumb now for not having tried it before, my friend is reading this with quite the smug grin on his face, and is telling me to write that it is the uni's network admins' fault for not allowing pinging or using my own dns.
Turns out copying the configuration from the fedora system would have worked out perfectly, weren't it for my dns settings.
YAY, I'm dumb.