"Wifi Unavailable" -- Kali Rolling 2016.2

[1312]

Greetings all, I am having one **** of an issue that is quite vexing. I have been researching this issue for days now and have found nothing which solves my problem. I am hoping someone here has the time/inclination to help me solve this. The issue is that getting my WiFi to work on Kali is more trouble than I ever remember it being. To elaborate further:

- WiFi is always shown as being "off" and when I click "turn on WiFi", absolutely nothing happens.
- The only way I can get on WiFi is to open WiFi Settings and click on the little slider bar near where it says "unavailable" until it stops immediately resetting itself to the the off position and saying that WiFi is unavailable. Sometimes this happens after only click it a few times, other times it takes longer or doesn't do anything at all.
- Even when I get connected I am sometimes immediately disconnected, other times I am disconnected after 30 minutes or so.

I am running Kali Rolling 2016.2 on a HP 17 x121dx I have it running as a HDD dual-boot alongside Windows 10. As an interesting side note, during the install I had absolutely no problem connecting to WiFi when installing Kali.

Output of a few commands:

uname -a

4.6.0-kali1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.6.4-1kali1 (2016-07-21) x86_64 GNU/Linux

lsb_release -a

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Kali
Description: Kali GNU/Linux Rolling
Release: kali-rolling
Codename: kali-rolling

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 5904 (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 5916 (rev 02)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Skylake Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 02)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI (rev 21)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port (rev f1)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d58 (rev 21)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device 9d71 (rev 21)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 07)
02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188EE Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

dmesg | tail
[ 4759.877771] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: AER: Corrected error received: id=00e5
[ 4759.877779] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: PCIe Bus Error: severity=Corrected, type=Physical Layer, id=00e5(Receiver ID)
[ 4759.877782] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: device [8086:9d15] error status/mask=00000001/00002000
[ 4759.877785] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: [ 0] Receiver Error (First)
[ 4759.877792] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: AER: Corrected error received: id=00e5
[ 4759.877844] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: can't find device of ID00e5
[ 4759.877861] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: AER: Corrected error received: id=00e5
[ 4759.877869] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: PCIe Bus Error: severity=Corrected, type=Physical Layer, id=00e5(Receiver ID)
[ 4759.877872] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: device [8086:9d15] error status/mask=00000001/00002000
[ 4759.877874] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: [ 0] Receiver Error (First)

rfkill list
0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no

ifconfig -a
eth0: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether ec:8e:b5:36:8f:d5 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host>
loop txqueuelen 1 (Local Loopback)
RX packets 37 bytes 2791 (2.7 KiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 37 bytes 2791 (2.7 KiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet *redacted* netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.0.255
inet6 *redacted* prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x0<global>
inet6 *redacted* prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x0<global>
inet6*redacted*prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x0<global>
inet6 *redacted* prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether *redacted* txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 107751 bytes 130694567 (124.6 MiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 84335 bytes 11276821 (10.7 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:*redacted*
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: *redacted*
Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality=42/70 Signal level=-68 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:101 Missed beacon:0

eth0 no wireless extensions.

ervice network-manager status
● NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2017-01-02 09:04:50 PST; 1h 40min ago
Docs: man:NetworkManager(8)
Main PID: 1474 (NetworkManager)
Tasks: 5 (limit: 4915)
CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service
├─1474 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon
├─2939 /sbin/dhclient -d -q -sf /usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-helper -pf /var/run/dhclient-wlan0.pid -lf /var/lib/NetworkManager/dhclient-656d368e-e1a6-4e49-
└─3097 /sbin/dhclient -d -q -6 -N -sf /usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-helper -pf /var/run/dhclient6-wlan0.pid -lf /var/lib/NetworkManager/dhclient6-656d368e-e1

Jan 02 10:44:40 Skynet NetworkManager[1474]: <warn> [1483382680.6913] sup-iface[0x19248b0,wlan0]: connection disconnected (reason -4)
Jan 02 10:44:40 Skynet NetworkManager[1474]: <info> [1483382680.7104] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: completed -> disconnected
Jan 02 10:44:40 Skynet NetworkManager[1474]: <info> [1483382680.7979] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning
Jan 02 10:44:41 Skynet NetworkManager[1474]: <info> [1483382681.6646] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> authenticating
Jan 02 10:44:41 Skynet NetworkManager[1474]: <info> [1483382681.6740] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: authenticating -> associating
Jan 02 10:44:41 Skynet NetworkManager[1474]: <info> [1483382681.6881] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: associating -> 4-way handshake
Jan 02 10:44:41 Skynet NetworkManager[1474]: <info> [1483382681.6965] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: 4-way handshake -> completed
Warning: Journal has been rotated since unit was started. Log output is incomplete or unavailable.

I have tried several different methods to solve this with zero success -- success meaning I am boot into Kali and am already connected to WiFi without the headache.

- I have ensured that "managed=true"
- I have stopped, started, restarted, Network Manager more times than I can count
- I have "airmon-ng check kill"d until my eyes bled

This wasn't issue until I switched to this laptop from my Dell. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[_defalt]

Your Terminal output rfkill list shows the cause of your problem.

The GNU/Linux kernel is loading the acer_wmi kernel module, even though you are NOT using Acer hardware.

Both the acer_wmi and hp_wmi kernel modules are running at the same time, creating a conflict and causing the wireless adapter to get deactivated by the acer_wmi kernel module.

However, you are using hp adapter, not the Acer adapter.

So the acer_wmi module needs to be blacklisted (= prevent it from starting during boot).

Please copy-paste the following command into the Terminal and then press ENTER:

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Using the gedit editor, please scroll down and ADD the following configuration line into the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:

blacklist acer_wmi
Using the gedit editor, SAVE the change to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file.

Then REBOOT. This blacklist operation should make the change permanent, even after rebooting.

This should force the Linux kernel to stop loading the acer_wmi module, which is probably causing the kernel to block your wireless adapter.

The acer-wireless interface is an invalid wireless interface on your computer, because you are not using ACER hardware.

[1312]

Thank you very much! I thought that output was a bit strange, but as I am not using ACER hardware I didn't think that was the source of my problem. Your assistance with this matter is greatly appreciated.

[_defalt]

Did it work as expected?

[1312]

Indeed! Thank you again.