Suddenly no wifi

[BigFrank]

Fired up my old laptop the other day and somehow it has no wifi? It worked when I put it away some months ago. Everything worked fine. Not my daily driver so just set it aside.

HP Pavilion x2 - Core m3-6Y30
Pop_OS 22.04 LTS

I can run it in a live boot and it works fine. Based on some other troubleshooting guides I have this info I collected during live boot of Pop_OS.

$ lspci -vnn -d ::0280
01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless 3165 [8086:3165] (rev 81)
DeviceName: Intel Stone Peak 1
Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless AC 3165 [8086:4010]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 148, IOMMU group 11
Memory at df000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
Kernel modules: iwlwifi

$ lsmod | grep iwlwifi
iwlwifi 626688 1 iwlmvm
cfg80211 1335296 3 iwlmvm,iwlwifi,mac80211

But running this in the installed OS - lsmod results with a blank reply.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Brickwizard]

Have you just installed POP [or just updated it]
Pop is made for syatem76's own kit, if it works OTB on anything else your llucky, if not it can be a big pain in the butt to get it working

 

[BigFrank]

Yep - it has been running on my old laptop for a couple of years without issue. Very likely that it got an update before the last shutdown. Might have even gone into suspend and not a real shutdown. A suspend coupled with a battery exhaustion. But that is pure speculation on my part. Battery was dead when I tried firing it up.

But - I can boot and it works fine with my Pop_OS live usb. That is what is crazy to me.

I am not exactly a neewb to Linux or Pop - but like most things I only know what I know. This "feels like" the old days when you had to blacklist a driver to keep it from conflicts. But that is so long ago I don't remember any of the steps from that.

Is there a way to reinitialize the iwlwifi driver from the CLI?

Thanks

 

[Brickwizard]

it is posible that the wi-fi has a broken package, as its Debian you could try
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt update && apt -f

 

[BigFrank]

Well - I dug around in my drawer and found a USB C cat 5 nic and it works plug and play with luck. Of course the PD or charging portion doesn't work - and it uses the only USB C port which on this HP is also the charging port... All this to say that I can connect this PC to the internet for 25 mins at a time because of the weak battery...

Anyway - I tried sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade and got some errors:

Spoiler: Click to see all

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.9.3-76060903-generic
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sda13
I: (UUID=33337dc1-a921-4f29-9d60-62a3b268f33d)
I: Set the RESUME variable to override this.
kernelstub.Config : INFO Looking for configuration...
kernelstub.Drive : ERROR Could not find a block device for the a partition. This i
s a critical error and we cannot continue.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/kernelstub/drive.py", line 56, in init
self.esp_fs = self.get_part_dev(self.esp_path)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/kernelstub/drive.py", line 94, in get_part_dev
raise NoBlockDevError('Couldn\'t find the block device for %s' % path)
kernelstub.drive.NoBlockDevError: Couldn't find the block device for /boot/efi
run-parts: /etc/initramfs/post-update.d//zz-kernelstub exited with return code 174
dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure):
installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess returned error exi
t status 1
Processing triggers for linux-image-6.9.3-76060903-generic (6.9.3-76060903.202405300957~1
738770968~22.04~d5f7c84) ...
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms:
* dkms: running auto installation service for kernel 6.9.3-76060903-generic
Error! The /var/lib/dkms/wireguard/1.0.20210606/6.9.3-76060903-generic/x86_64/dkms.conf f
or module wireguard includes a BUILD_EXCLUSIVE directive which does not match this kernel
/arch.
The /var/lib/dkms/wireguard/1.0.20210606/6.9.3-76060903-generic/x86_64/dkms.conf for modu
le wireguard includes a BUILD_EXCLUSIVE directive which does not match this kernel/arch/c
onfig.
This indicates that it should not be built.
...done.
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools:
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.9.3-76060903-generic
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sda13
I: (UUID=33337dc1-a921-4f29-9d60-62a3b268f33d)
I: Set the RESUME variable to override this.
kernelstub.Config : INFO Looking for configuration...
kernelstub.Drive : ERROR Could not find a block device for the a partition. This i
s a critical error and we cannot continue.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/kernelstub/drive.py", line 56, in init
self.esp_fs = self.get_part_dev(self.esp_path)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/kernelstub/drive.py", line 94, in get_part_dev
raise NoBlockDevError('Couldn\'t find the block device for %s' % path)
kernelstub.drive.NoBlockDevError: Couldn't find the block device for /boot/efi
run-parts: /etc/initramfs/post-update.d//zz-kernelstub exited with return code 174
run-parts: /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools exited with return code 1
dpkg: error processing package linux-image-6.9.3-76060903-generic (--configure):
installed linux-image-6.9.3-76060903-generic package post-installation script subprocess
returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
initramfs-tools
linux-image-6.9.3-76060903-generic
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Ran the dpkg --configure -a and looks like I am getting the same errors.

Charging the battery back up now. (Shame shame shame on manufacturers for prohibiting power coming into the machine because it cant verify that it is a real HP charging block - which it is... that is causing my current dilemma of charge OR internet, not both... but now back to our story...)

Thanks for your help

 

[BigFrank]

Can I just go to intel's website, download the right driver and force it back in?

 

[dos2unix]

You can give this a try.

sudo apt-get install firmware-iwlwifi

sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
sudo modprobe iwlwifi

It might be a good idea see if there are any errors.

dmesg | grep iwlwifi

 

[Brickwizard]

Can I just go to intel's website,

the drivers are Kernel ones not intel

you could try
sudo apt-get install--reinstall linux-firmware then re-boot

 

[BigFrank]

Well the command seems to do something but ultimately moves onto the

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.9.3-76060903-generic

And after a bunch of thinking ends up with

Errors were encountered while processing:
 initramfs-tools
 linux-image-6.9.3-76060903-generic
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Spoiler: Click to see full CLI details

$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-firmware
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/375 MB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
(Reading database ... 351599 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../linux-firmware_20240610.git1d67e66d-0pop1+system76~1732201256~22.04~9061b5f_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking linux-firmware (20240610.git1d67e66d-0pop1+system76~1732201256~22.04~9061b5f) over (20240610.git1d67e66d-0pop1+system76~1732201256~22.04~9061b5f) ...
Setting up initramfs-tools (0.140ubuntu13.4pop2~1711143149~22.04~e0b5994) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Setting up linux-firmware (20240610.git1d67e66d-0pop1+system76~1732201256~22.04~9061b5f) ...
Setting up linux-image-6.9.3-76060903-generic (6.9.3-76060903.202405300957~1738770968~22.04~d5f7c84) ...
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.140ubuntu13.4pop2~1711143149~22.04~e0b5994) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.9.3-76060903-generic
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sda13
I: (UUID=33337dc1-a921-4f29-9d60-62a3b268f33d)
I: Set the RESUME variable to override this.
kernelstub.Config : INFO Looking for configuration...
kernelstub.Drive : ERROR Could not find a block device for the a partition. This is a critical error and we cannot continue.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/kernelstub/drive.py", line 56, in init
self.esp_fs = self.get_part_dev(self.esp_path)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/kernelstub/drive.py", line 94, in get_part_dev
raise NoBlockDevError('Couldn\'t find the block device for %s' % path)
kernelstub.drive.NoBlockDevError: Couldn't find the block device for /boot/efi
run-parts: /etc/initramfs/post-update.d//zz-kernelstub exited with return code 174
dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure):
installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Processing triggers for linux-image-6.9.3-76060903-generic (6.9.3-76060903.202405300957~1738770968~22.04~d5f7c84) ...
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms:
* dkms: running auto installation service for kernel 6.9.3-76060903-generic
Error! The /var/lib/dkms/wireguard/1.0.20210606/6.9.3-76060903-generic/x86_64/dkms.conf for module wireguard includes a BUILD_EXCLUSIVE directive which does not match this kernel/arch.
The /var/lib/dkms/wireguard/1.0.20210606/6.9.3-76060903-generic/x86_64/dkms.conf for module wireguard includes a BUILD_EXCLUSIVE directive which does not match this kernel/arch/config.
This indicates that it should not be built.
...done.
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools:
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.9.3-76060903-generic
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sda13
I: (UUID=33337dc1-a921-4f29-9d60-62a3b268f33d)
I: Set the RESUME variable to override this.
kernelstub.Config : INFO Looking for configuration...
kernelstub.Drive : ERROR Could not find a block device for the a partition. This is a critical error and we cannot continue.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/kernelstub/drive.py", line 56, in init
self.esp_fs = self.get_part_dev(self.esp_path)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/kernelstub/drive.py", line 94, in get_part_dev
raise NoBlockDevError('Couldn\'t find the block device for %s' % path)
kernelstub.drive.NoBlockDevError: Couldn't find the block device for /boot/efi
run-parts: /etc/initramfs/post-update.d//zz-kernelstub exited with return code 174
run-parts: /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools exited with return code 1
dpkg: error processing package linux-image-6.9.3-76060903-generic (--configure):
installed linux-image-6.9.3-76060903-generic package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
initramfs-tools
linux-image-6.9.3-76060903-generic
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Seeming like my real problem is this update or error that won't clear.

Thanks again.

 

[BigFrank]

I punted. The wife wanted the laptop for some homework. Had some space on the ssd so I installed Pop again and copied the home folders over. Took less than an hour and all is good.

Of course - now we will find out the easy answer... but thanks again for the help.