nmcli the WiFi network could not be found

Question

I'm running a headless device that I want to connect to wifi(it's currently on ethernet), so I'm using nmcli. I scan for connections with the following:

sudo nmcli dev wifi rescan
sudo nmcli dev wifi list

and the WiFi network I want is at 95% strength. So, I connect with:

sudo nmcli dev wifi connect "SSID" password "wifipassword"

and I get the following error:

Error: Connection activation failed: (53) The Wi-Fi network could not be found.

and I've tried copying and pasting from list to ensure I did not mistype the SSID, and it still does not work. It works fine from other devices that use Ubuntu and network-manager, so I know it's not the router.

How can it not find the network when I connect, but find it just fine when scanning, and how do I fix this?

Answer 1

this one fixed the issue for me - https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/519620/407616
add this

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

to /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
then run

sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

then you can connect to the ssid by

sudo nmcli dev wifi connect "SSID" password "wifipassword"

Answer 2

I never found a fix for the issue, but I believe I found the problem. I was using a virtual interface made with

sudo iw dev wlan0 interface add ap0 type __ap

to host a WiFi network, but ap0 and wlan0 had the same MAC address. Due to a problem with the RPi3 drivers, I couldn't change the MAC address(I tried macchanged -e ap0), but if I figured out how to, I'm pretty sure the issue would have been resolved.

Answer 3

Try this without password

sudo nmcli dev wifi connect "SSID"

Answer 4

When I tried to connect a rather old a/b/g WiFi client to a mixed WPA 2 + WPA 3 WiFi network, I stumbled upon this problem, too. I guessed that maybe NM was not able to figure out the right settings for such an environment, so I ran nmcli connection edit <BSSID> and then configured the following settings:

• set connection.metered no
• set 802-11-wireless.band bg
• set 802-11-wireless-security.key-mgmt wpa-psk

(Do not forget to save, before you exit)

Pretty sure the first setting can be ignored, however the connection is stable for several days now and even when I reboot the router or the device, the connection is being reestablished right away.

Answer 5

I face this issue in the past and tried lost of tips. But this solution worked for me on my Ubuntu 20.04:

Improve WiFi connection by disabling power management for the wireless card

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

Then restart the computer

NB: The Wi-Fi power-saving mode is a built-in mode that allows devices to save power by analyzing the data usage pattern with time and then making sure that the Wi-Fi doesn’t drain too much battery of the device in question. But there is a need to be cautious, too, since this can affect your browsing experience.

Answer 6

I solved my problem by just turn your system in sleep mode then again turn it on this solve my problem without restart

Answer 7

I was unexpectedly getting this issue which was strange. I was adding a wifi network programmatically with python e.g

os.system("nmcli r wifi on")
os.system("nmcli dev wifi rescan")
os.system("nmcli d wifi connect myssid password mypass") 

It was a race condition where I needed to put some wait time between each command. Works just fine now. Hope this helps someone.