No Wi-Fi device found

26 Replies

I just reinstalled one of my machines with Fedora 21. The install went great, but when the machine was done rebooting, and I was trying to set up my access to a wireless network with nmcli (NetworkManager), I got the following error-message:

..and:

Spending a lot of time finding what the problem was, I finally found the solution.  It seems that Wi-Fi support in NetworkManager has been separated to a plugin. The package NetworkManager-wifi was missing. According to Pablo S. Torralba, who was kind enough to comment on this post, it should be enough to kill NetworkManager and launch it again as root. Should that fail, you can always try the old reboot-trick!  Either way, it should hopefully be working.

26 thoughts on “No Wi-Fi device found”

  1. Karl Poe

    And here I was pulling my hair out for three hours, until I stumbled upon your blog. Thank you for saving my sanity! :-)

    Reply ↓
  2. wen

    Many thanks. It took me 2 days researching until I found your post.
    Many thanks!
    Wen

    Reply ↓
  3. Najib

    Hello any idea where Network Manager- WiFi package can be downloaded from? I’m very new to Linux and installed Centos and my wifi is not working. It says unmanaged. Thanks for all of your help

    Reply ↓
    1. Jorge Enrique Barrera Post author

      Hello!

      If you are new to Linux, I would suggest using either Fedora Workstation or Ubuntu Desktop, as I feel they both are more userfriendly, and will introduce you more easily into the world of Linux.

      If you however still want to find the NetworkManager-Wifi-package, try opening up a terminal, and typing the command (as the user ‘root’):

      yum install NetworkManager-wifi

      See if that helps. :)

      Reply ↓
  4. Jason

    Just wanted to pause and say thank you -so much-

    Forced myself to upgrade my lab to RHEL7 and the wired box was fine, but I was having fits with the wifi box and couldn’t figure out why (and was trying to learn all the new ways and try to not fall back to iw packages). Kept working on the Live media but never on my installed version and the nmcli output was not helping me any.

    Voila, perfection, I have a great geeky man crush, thanks again!

    Reply ↓
    1. Jorge Enrique Barrera Post author

      You’re very welcome! I’m happy that you found some use of what I wrote. :) When it happened to me it was driving me bananas!

      Reply ↓
  5. andresvia

    Thanks, I’ve wasted so much time trying to figure out why the connection was not managed.

    Reply ↓
  6. fnc

    WTF. Everyone says thanks but I cannot understand how package is named. Please type it so I can copy and paste it to apt-get install command. Thanks

    Reply ↓
    1. Jorge Enrique Barrera Post author

      The package name probably doesn’t work because you’re using another version of Linux (when I wrote the article I based it on Fedora, and it seems you’re using Ubuntu most likely). Is it Ubuntu that you’re using? If so, what version? If you do have Ubuntu, and it’s a default installation, wifi should be working out of the box. Could you explain your setup to me?

      Reply ↓
  7. CrazyPerk

    Awesome man, you saved me from almost quitting the installation job :) Appreciate your help!

    Reply ↓
  8. Mohammed

    Hi, I’m in trouble because the system is not registered to red hat subscription management.
    So I can’t download any package and the WiFi , eth not working

    Reply ↓
    1. Jorge Enrique Barrera Post author

      Hi! I suspect that you’ve downloaded the Red Hat Linux distribution, is that correct? You need to pay for a Red Hat subscription to be able to download and update packages. An alternative to Red Hat Linux though is CentOS. Someone wrote:

      CentOS is very close to being RHEL without the branding and support. In particular, the library versions are the same, so binaries that work on one will work on the other. The administration tools are the same and configured in similar ways. However, there are a few differences, as the two distributions sometimes apply different minor patches.

      Give that a try if you don’t feel like paying for a subscription!

      Reply ↓
  10. Pablo S. Torralba

    Thank you. As many other said, you saved me a lot of time. Just to add, I got into this situation because I was upgrading an old distribution and the new extra package wasn’ t installed during the upgrade.

    Also, you don’ t really need to reboot. For me it was enough to kill NetworkManager and launch it again as root. It automatically got the wifi connected because I already had the configuration.

    Just my 2 cents, but all kudos for you. Thanks again!

    Reply ↓
    1. Jorge Enrique Barrera Post author

      Thanks for the feedback! I’ll make sure to include it in the post. :)

      Reply ↓
  11. Vik

    Hi there, It is been more than 3 days still am not able to find wifi adapter/drivers.

    I tried your solution but doesn’t seems like to work.

    I am on centos 8, you can see Yum says NetworkManager-wifi is already installed but doesn’t list it.

    [root@andromeda Downloads]# yum install NetworkManager-wifi
    CentOS-8 – AppStream 1.5 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:02
    CentOS-8 – Base 1.4 kB/s | 3.8 kB 00:02
    CentOS-8 – Extras 548 B/s | 1.5 kB 00:02
    Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 – x86_64 6.9 kB/s | 11 kB 00:01
    Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 – x86_64 442 kB/s | 2.0 MB 00:04
    Package NetworkManager-wifi-1:1.14.0-14.el8.x86_64 is already installed.
    Dependencies resolved.
    Nothing to do.
    Complete!
    [root@andromeda Downloads]# nmcli dev wifi rescan
    Error: No Wi-Fi device found.
    [root@andromeda Downloads]#

    Reply ↓
    1. Jorge Enrique Barrera Post author

      There is a chance that the wifi-drivers for your wireless card isn’t installed. Do you know what kind of wireless card you have? Could you show me the output of the command ‘lspci’?

      Reply ↓
  12. Tent

    I also have same symptoms. I seem to have NetworkManager-wifi-1.16.2-1.fc30 and tried to kill and run it as root without change.
    My lspci | grep Wir gives me :
    Intel corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (Rev 78)

    Any hint?

    Reply ↓
  13. Tent

    I managed to move an updated version of NetworkManager-wifi-1.16.4-1.fc30 and now it works!
    this issue is quite nasty if you don’t have access to an Ethernet cable and have to rely on wifi only.. :(

    Hope others will also manage, thanks a lot for pointing it out! Tent.

    Reply ↓
    1. Jorge Enrique Barrera Post author

      Glad you found a way! Thanks for posting your solution. :)

      Reply ↓
  14. tim

    hey Jorge, I usually run ubuntu but recently had to install centos 7 for a particular scientific software package. that was after successfully installing centos 8 only to find the software was only supported on 7. anyhow, it came up with only a command line, and of course i can’t install anything because i can’t connect to the internet. i tried
    nmcli radio
    and everything is enabled. i see my both my wired and wireless devices with both
    nmcli device and ip link but
    nmcli dev wifi connect SSID
    gives “no wifi device found”.
    i killed network manager and restarted it with the same results.

    i don’t have access to a wired connection, but i might have to start going door to door begging for one at this point.

    any chance you can help?

    Reply ↓
    1. Jorge Enrique Barrera Post author

      Hello Tim!

      Sorry to hear you’re having those issues. =/ Could you check if you have the package NetworkManager-wifi installed? The command:


      rpm -qa | grep -i networkmanager

      ..should show you if you have the package installed.

      Also, could you please provide me with the output of the command:


      cat /etc/redhat-release

      Reply ↓
  15. mac

    Conclusion:
    sudo dnf install NetworkManager-wifi.x86_64
    sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager
    sudo nmcli d wifi list –rescan yes
    For me it worked, thank you.

    Reply ↓

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