Insync disconnects wifi, unable to reconnect (with solution)

I’m on a nearly fresh Xubuntu install (info below), and I’m having the following issue. Insync starts fine, but at some point stops syncing (I can see this by watching the stream…instead of “last update 1s” it starts to say “last update 5 m”, and keeps getting longer, while there are still things to sync). When this happens, I have no internet access and my pings answer

Temporary failure in name resolution

Starting and restarting Insync does not seem to fix this (as in, I can’t get my internet back). If I disconnect from the wifi and try to reconnect, the system completely freezes, requiring a restart. I suppose the system freeze might not be “because of Insync”, but the source of the problem certainly is - I can happily use this system until I start Insync, at which point is always, after 5-10 min, disconnects the wifi.

Any help would be appreciated. I grabbed the logs right after this happened and will try to attach them here.

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS
Release:	20.04
Codename:	focal
$ uname -a
Linux Xubunac 5.4.0-56-generic #62-Ubuntu SMP Mon Nov 23 19:20:19 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Logs, I hope!

I think I’ve solved this, by switching from the wl module to the b43 module. So although Insync seemed to be creating the problem, it was not the source of the problem.

1 Like

Hi @Christopher_Duston,

Glad to know you were able to sort it out. Can I help you with anything else?

Exact the same issue on my MacBook Pro and Ubuntu 21.04. Insync is killing my wifi connectiion after a few minutes and I have to reboot to get wlan again. I am on b43 module. No workaround is solving my problem. Please help!

Hi! Let me check this out with our engineers. Could you let me know if you are able to switch to another network and see if the same behavior persists?

Hi, it is my only home network. I tried my guest access of my network with the same result.

The issue happened when I tried to transfere 140 GB from my Google-drive to my freshly installed system.
I stopped Insync and am just copying the files manually. Perhaps 140 GB in one job is too much? But the software shouldn’t interfere with the wifi.

Insync is working fine in the same network on an old Acer notebook with Ubuntu 21.04 and also on the MacBook Pro with Mac OS X.

After all files will be transfered I will start Insync again and will let you know its behaviour.

Frank

PS: Probably my problem is solved: The opposite way of the above mentioned solution of Christopher in Dec 20: helped. I changed from b43 to the “wl-driver”.

Hi @fjoe,

Thank you for confirming that changing it from b43 to “wl-driver” helped. The 140GB may hit some hiccups due to the large sync job, but yes, it shouldn’t directly interfere with the wifi.

I’ll raise this to our engineers. :slight_smile:

UPDATE
From our engineers: Insync doesn’t interfere with the internet connection — this seems to be a driver issue (probably incompatible with the user’s hardware) causing the wifi to go down

I am having the same problem on my Linux Mint 21 system. My system is using AMD X570 chipset with Intel wifi controller:

04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX200 [8086:2723] (rev 1a)
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX200NGW [8086:0084]
	Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
	Kernel modules: iwlwifi

This problem is so frustrating. Makes using Insync almost impossible. Any ideas on how to resolve it?

To confirm, does the wifi reconnect once you quit Insync, @Ben_Gunn?

Hi Mia. No it does not. It is not that the wifi is switching off but rather that there is no longer any internet connectivity. Closing Insync does not resolve it. The only way to recover is to exit Insync then turn off the wifi connection via the network settings and then restart it again. At this point I can restart Insync which will continue syncing for a short while before the same thing happens.

Normally my wifi connection is rock stable, it is only when I start syncing things with Insync that this issue ever occurs. I should point out the issue only occurs when there are a large number/size of files to sync. I have not had issues with the internet connect when Insync is sitting idle in the background or just syncing one or two files.

Hi @Ben_Gunn,

Thank you for narrowing down the situation. There seems to be an interference whenever a large sync is ongoing. With that in mind, could you please send the following to support@insynchq.com:

  • logs.db
  • out.txt
  • data folder
  • live folder

Here’s how to find these: https://help.insynchq.com/en/articles/1834816-locating-the-log-files. If the files are too big for an attachment, feel free to upload them in the cloud and send us a shared link so we can download accordingly.