Secrets were required, but not provided

Psst… tl:dr -> rebooting my wireless router fixed the problem.

A few months ago I setup a wireless Gitlab server. This server has been working great. Once in a while I check up on it via SSH and make sure it’s updated. Otherwise, I leave it alone and it’s happy.

That is until today.

Secrets were required, but not provided

Today, for some reason, I could not access my gitlab server via the web interface or push to it via the git cli. In fact, I couldn’t even SSH into it. I had to pull out the ol’ physical monitor and keyboard and MANUALLY connect. Shudder.

First thing I do upon connecting to the server is try to ping google.com of course. It didn’t work. The server could not find the address for Google, and as anyone knows, if you cannot find Google then the internet does not exist. Plain and simple. You might as well be trying to fly a kite in the Marianas trench.

Now, up until this point I’ve had no issues connecting to the internet. The server automatically connects to the WIFI no big deal. However, I thought that maybe the network authorization expired or something? Maybe I can only connect for a few months at a time before re-authenticating. So I tried just that. I whipped out my old friend nmcli and ran:

nmcli device wifi connect MyAccessPoint password 123456789ACB

This is when I see the dreaded Secrets were required, but not provided response. Well – I’m not sure what secrets it wants me to tell it but I mean, the password was right, and I’m certainly not telling it who my favorite little pony is or even if I like little ponies.

I tried several more times, I tried rebooting the server. Nothing worked. It was at that point that I, using another computer, logged into my wireless router and told it to reboot. Several minutes later everything is fine.

Rebooting my router fixed the problem

Why? I don’t know. There has been some talk that some routers will auto select channels that some linux machines do not like. I think that was likely the original issue. Rebooting the router worked because another channel was selected. In any case… long story short. If you are having issues with your wireless server not connecting to your network then try rebooting your router.