Radio Devices: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WWAN¶
Slow or unstable Wi-Fi on battery power¶
Cause: kernel driver does not implement power saving properly.
Solution: disable power saving on battery
WIFI_PWR_ON_BAT=off
Wi-Fi power saving is activated despite being disabled in TLP’s configuration¶
Cause: conflict with NetworkManager.
Solution: remove the file /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf.
Bluetooth devices hang, disconnect or do not pair¶
Cause: most internal laptop bluetooth devices and all external bluetooth dongles are USB devices. Some do not implement autosuspend mode properly, giving trouble to connected devices or preventing discovery or pairing.
Solutions
Version 1.0 and newer: configure USB_BLACKLIST_BTUSB =1.
Version 0.9 and before: identify the USB bluetooth device with
tlp-stat -u | grep btusb
and add it to USB_BLACKLIST.
Apply the new setting with
sudo tlp usb
Bluetooth is not disabled upon system startup¶
Probable cause: your desktop environment’s bluetooth applet – or some other installed software – re-enables the bluetooth device after TLP disabled it.
Solution: disable the relevant applet’s setting or disable/remove the causing applet. For XFCE/blueman see Disable Bluetooth Auto Power-on in Blueman.
Radio states are not restored according to RESTORE_DEVICE_STATE_ON_STARTUP=1¶
Cause: conflict with other settings, for instance DEVICES_TO_DISABLE_ON_STARTUP ff.
Solution: don’t use RESTORE_DEVICE_STATE_ON_STARTUP=1 and DEVICES_TO_DISABLE_ON_STARTUP ff. simultaneously.
Cause: systemd implements its own radio state restore scheme systemd-rfkill.service
Solution: use either RESTORE_DEVICE_STATE_ON_STARTUP=1 or systemd’s approach but not both.