Wifi adapter won't connect after update

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

Atheros ath9k chipset wifi usb dangle stopped working after update. It powers up, gets warm, but won’t connect.

the thing is there is also an interface problem on xfce, like black desktop (only with custom wallpaper; if default wallpaper, then no problem), dead icons on system tray, dead sensors plugin, wrong dual display connection.

i think yesterday’s update of gpu driver broke smth. today updated, checked keyrings and linux-headers; today updating linux-headers re-updated nvidia drivers (open driver due to nvidia drop of pascal chips), but didn’t fix anything.

lsusb
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0cf3:9271 Qualcomm Atheros Communications AR9271 802.11n

sudo dmesg | grep -i ath9k
[  591.236477] usbcore: registered new interface driver ath9k_htc
[  591.698265] usb 3-1: ath9k_htc: Transferred FW: ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw, size: 51008
[  591.949113] ath9k_htc 3-1:1.0: ath9k_htc: HTC initialized with 33 credits
[  592.175361] ath9k_htc 3-1:1.0: ath9k_htc: FW Version: 1.4
[  592.175373] ath9k_htc 3-1:1.0: FW RMW support: On

lsmod | grep ath9k_htc
ath9k_htc             131072  0
ath9k_common           53248  1 ath9k_htc
ath9k_hw              585728  2 ath9k_htc,ath9k_common
ath                    40960  3 ath9k_htc,ath9k_common,ath9k_hw
mac80211             1818624  2 ath9k_htc,ath9k_hw
cfg80211             1581056  4 ath9k_htc,ath9k_common,ath,mac80211
rfkill                 45056  4 ath9k_htc,cfg80211

rfkill
ID TYPE DEVICE      SOFT      HARD
0 wlan phy0   unblocked unblocked

pacman -Qi linux-firmware
Name            : linux-firmware
Version         : 20260916-1
.......
Required By     : None
Optional For    : linux
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 0,00 B
Packager        : Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) heftig@archlinux.org
Build Date      : Th 17 Sep 2026 06:21:22
Install Date    : Sa 17 Oct 2026 16:35:27
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

ip link
wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000

sudo ip link set wlan0  up
RTNETLINK answers: Message too long

pacman -Qk linux linux-firmware glibc xfce4-panel
linux: 7749 total files, 0 missing files
linux-firmware: 0 total files, 0 missing files
glibc: 1637 total files, 0 missing files
xfce4-panel: 415 total files, 0 missing files

lspci -k | grep -A 3 -i net
08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)
	Subsystem: ASRock Incorporation Motherboard (one of many)
	Kernel driver in use: r8169
	Kernel modules: r8169

What to do, does anybody know?

2

Two separate things here. The broken desktop is almost certainly your Pascal card: the Arch news of 20.12.2025 says driver 590 dropped Pascal (GTX 10xx) and the main packages switched to the open kernel modules, which breaks the graphical environment on exactly those cards - the documented fix is to uninstall the nvidia packages and install nvidia-580xx-dkms from the AUR. For the wifi, your own dmesg shows the ath9k_htc firmware loading fine, and the “empty” linux-firmware package is normal: Arch split it into vendor packages back in June 2025, so the meta package is intentionally 0 files. My hypothesis for the “Message too long” at link-up is a kernel/userspace mismatch from the interrupted driver update - do a full pacman -Syu and a reboot after the driver fix, then check wlan0 again. If it still refuses, a fresh dmesg line from the firmware load would tell more.

3

Thanks for your interest in the question and your answer.

Updated today, rebooted, but nothing got fixed.

Wi-Fi Networks: device not ready

open nvidia driver from AUR i’m using for a year now. yesterday i tried to check if anything wrong, powered up Steam and played a game, everything seems fine. Steam overlay also shows temperatures from CPU and GPU being read correctly.

I have no idea what’s going on and how to fix this…

4

If simply switch to lts kernel, this is safe bet, right?

sudo pacman -Syyu linux-lts linux-lts-headers

and then save the bootloader

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

no compatibility problem will be with open nvidia driver from AUR?

5

installed lts kernel. not fixed :frowning:

uname --kernel-release
6.18.57-2-lts
6

Does anybody know, how likely is the next kernel release to fix the issue?