wireless problem with upgrade to 20.04 LTS / and live DVD installation for 22.04 failing

[David]

Hi folks,

I’m hoping you could guess at what’s going wrong with my upgrade attempts.

I have run Ubuntu on an old laptop with an internal optical drive for years and have in the past installed new LTSs via the ISO burned onto a DVD-R. For LTS 18.04 I used a rewritable DVD, and have never before had a problem with the internet wireless connection working right from the start.

Last week I decided to move up from 18.04 and tried the online Upgrade option for the first time (instead of a clean install from a live disk). The upgrade to 20.04 LTS completed, but I had no internet connection. I googled this and saw info about something called Netplan and about a yaml file, but the coding changes looked too complicated for me.

So yesterday I burnt the 22.04 LTS ISO onto a brand-new rewritable DVD and tried to do a clean install, held down F12 at start up, chose the optical drive, selected “Try or Install Ubuntu”, and let it do its thing. After a while the screen displayed a long list of actions that had taken place, each starting with things like
[ OK ] started…
[ OK ] finished…
[ OK ] reached…
Etc
But it stopped at:
“Failed to start Snap Daemon”
and below that
“Failed to start Ubuntu live CD installer”

I tried again a few times, but it continued to get stuck there.

I then took out the installer DVD and rebooted the laptop, and 20.04 LTS opened up, this time with the Internet connection, which was a surprise! I used the Internet via the laptop for an hour or so, thought “That’s fixed then!” and then shut down the laptop for the evening.

This morning I booted up again and it started 20.04 again but the Internet connection was gone again.
I tried installing 22.04 from the DVD again, but it got stuck again (the drive and the DVD clicking away), with the difference this time that it didn’t report Snap Daemon as failed, it only reported that it couldn’t start the live CD installer.

I removed the DVD, restarted and 20.04 opened up, with the wireless connection working again…!?!
The wireless connection remained in place during the day even if I shut down the laptop and removed the mains power, and waited a few hours before starting the laptop again, Internet connection still in place. But when I shut down the laptop for the night, the next morning the Internet connection is gone again when I start up the laptop.
Do you have any ideas about what is happening, and what I could do to get 22.04 installing from the ISO on the DVD?

It’d be a bit inconvenient to have to run a failed live install from the DVD each time I want to access the Internet from 20.04 !

Or do you suggest that I try (when the connection is there after a failed DVD install session) to do the online upgrade from 20.04 to 22.04? I am just worried that I may get the same result, no Internet at the end of it, and I always assumed in the past that a clean new install was better than upgrading the old version online…

Thanks for your time if you’ve read down to here!

Dave