Kernel 4.8.1 to 4.9 wi-fi problem [Solved]

Software & Operating Systems Linux
,
1

Looking for some help / inspiration.

I have bought the wife an Asus UX305CA laptop for Xmas.

The wife is not technical so she doesn’t really care what OS a machine has so long as it “just works”.

So, first thing is to see if Mint 18 works on it and lo, it does! I upgrade the laptop to kernel 4.8.1 and put it back in its draw to await wrapping.

Now kernel 4.9 lands. I install and the wi-fi vanishes. Roll back to 4.8.1 and all is well.

Here are the logs

Broken

Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.124368] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-26.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.125245] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-25.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.125264] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-24.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.125405] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-23.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.125440] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-22.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.125449] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-21.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.125457] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-20.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.125466] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-19.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.125474] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-18.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.125482] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-17.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 18:45:53 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.125483] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: no suitable firmware found!

Working

Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.403045] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-24.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.403195] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-23.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.403219] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-22.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.403676] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-21.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.403702] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-20.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.403721] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-19.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.403741] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-18.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.403760] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-17.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.411268] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: loaded firmware version 16.242414.0 op_mode iwlmvm
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.412565] media: Linux media interface: v0.10
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.431611] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.449882] AVX2 version of gcm_enc/dec engaged.
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.449883] AES CTR mode by8 optimization enabled
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.450787] Adding 8282108k swap on /dev/sda3. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:8282108k SSFS
Dec 12 19:58:35 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.473591] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 7265, REV=0x210

The Intel driver page is here

But it only seems to have version 14 of the driver. The README says

Installation of the firmware is simply:

% cp iwlwifi-7265-14.ucode /lib/firmware
% cp iwlwifi-7265D-14.ucode /lib/firmware

You can now load the driver (see the INSTALL and README.iwlwifi provided with
the iwlwifi package for information on building and using that driver.)

Is it really as easy as just copying the files in?

Building / compiling the driver is not something I have done before. The instructions sound to me like this is an additional step.

Any advice is welcome. This is hardly a big issue as I can leave the laptop on 4.8.1 but is just annoying as this adapter is supposed to be supported from kernel 3.13 and up from what I can find.

Thanks

Ro55mo

2

In this case, yes. The driver, iwlwifi selects the firmware on the fly since the driver is built into the kernel. The driver loads the firmware using the kernel's firmware_class infrastructure. I consider bad form to force the user to compile and load drivers in a kernel. So no you don't need to compile the driver.

3

Thanks for the quick reply. It is late here so I will try this tomorrow evening and post the results.

4

Also remember you don't /need/ to have the latest software running; stability weighs more anyway

2 Likes
5

I agree for sure Baz. This more for fun than anything else.

In any case I added the additional ucode files, then upgraded to 4.9 with the same result.

I guess something beyond my current understanding must be going on.

6

Even though I'm using Gentoo and not Mint I might be able to help.

After I upgraded my kernel to 4.9 I also had firmware issues with wifi.
After I upgraded linux-firmware to the version released on 2016-12-05 it worked again.
Looks like it was updated.

Hope this might help you.

7

I always thought that the kernel and linux-firmware went hand in hand when doing kernel updates? Perhaps I am wrong?

8

did you get the firmware from linux-frimeware.git? Because the current version is iwlwifi-7265D-22.ucode. http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/linux-firmware.git/tree/iwlwifi-7265D-22.ucode

1 Like
9

Here is the puzzle piece. Thank you darkhorseman91.

No I was getting the files from the Intel website which is providing version 14. I did find it odd that the error starts by asking about ucode 26 and that the laptop had ucode files higher than 14. Version 16 as I recall which makes sense with the errors.

So lets see what difference these new files make and then after that I will try the kernel update again.

10

That has done the trick

With 4.8.1 working

Dec 15 20:01:09 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.228305] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-24.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 15 20:01:09 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.228458] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-23.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 15 20:01:09 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.231441] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: loaded firmware version 22.361476.0 op_mode iwlmvm
Dec 15 20:01:09 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.255782] AVX2 version of gcm_enc/dec engaged.
Dec 15 20:01:09 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.255783] AES CTR mode by8 optimization enabled
Dec 15 20:01:09 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.274843] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: bound 0000:00:02.0 (ops i915_audio_component_bind_ops [i915])
Dec 15 20:01:09 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.282694] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 7265, REV=0x210

With 4.9 working

Dec 15 20:05:55 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.201433] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-26.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 15 20:05:55 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.201794] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-25.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 15 20:05:55 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.201813] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-24.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 15 20:05:55 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.201967] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-23.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 15 20:05:55 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.205145] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: loaded firmware version 22.361476.0 op_mode iwlmvm
Dec 15 20:05:55 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.206274] media: Linux media interface: v0.10
Dec 15 20:05:55 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.208235] Adding 8282108k swap on /dev/sda3. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:8282108k SSFS
Dec 15 20:05:55 Mutie-II kernel: [ 5.248396] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 7265, REV=0x210

Thymo are you referring to the firmware linked by darkhorseman91 or a different file?

Thank you all for your replies and especially darkhorseman91. This post taught me some new things on my Linux journey.

SOLVED!

11

Not specifically. Although that version might be the one I've got installed.

12

I made this account just to say a thank you, this literally stopped my week from getting ruined.

Hope this will get upranked on Google search engine, so others may benefit from it.

13

1 year later necro. Thread is locked.