Lost Wi-Fi and USB after boot in 20.04

[Chris]

Edit: I’m changing this to “Development” because the problem seems to have been fixed by re-booting the computer, but it seems to non-programmer me that this must be some kind of bug in 20.04 that needs to be fixed. Please note that Lubuntu 20.04 was a completely new install, not an update/upgrade from another version of Lubuntu…

I don’t what happened, but when I booted this morning, my Wi-Fi wasn’t working and neither were my USB ports.
In nm-tray, my Wi-Fi signal was available, but Wi-Fi wasn’t connected, and nm-tray wouldn’t let me select it. If I tried to select it, nothing would happen, just nothing.
Also, my USB dongles and external hard drive weren’t recognized when I plugged them in. Just nothing happened.
I have a very old Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop with Broadcom Wi-Fi. However, after installing the correct firmware, I never had any Wi-Fi issues on any other versions of Lubuntu. Also, never had USB failure before.
The problem was fixed by rebooting, but I’m afraid this is going to be like Russian roulette every time I start my computer.

[wxl]

If the problem is not happening, it’s going to be hard to debug. You can dig through the logs and see if you can find the relevant entries. That’s about the best I can offer. The other thing I will mention that people fail to consider: hardware does fail. Sometimes intermittently.

[Chris]

Yeah, but my Wi-Fi and USB failed at the same time and then un-failed at the same time? Not likely.

Anyway, if it happens again, will try to get more information.

[wxl]

Not likely, but not impossible, especially if the failure is in the bus between the CPU and the peripheral ports.