Wifi dead on Dell after recent 24.04 update
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1558986/wifi-dead-on-dell-after-recent-24-04-update
Last year I bought a Dell G15 5530. It came with Ubuntu 22 LTS.
I decided to change OS to Ubuntu 24, and it worked perfectly for a year until recently.
After an update I lost wifi access: after boot my wifi connected for a minute, then stopped working. Turning off and on the wifi from the applet resulted in two behaviours:
- the wifi adapter not being able to detect networks;
- no wifi adapter found.
I am on slow USB tethering since the update in mid september.
I tried to solve the issue looking for my problem here, then using chatGPT.
Summarizing more than a month of tribulation, I tried to:
- update the kernel from generic 6.8 to HWE (6.14)
- reinstall the singular required modules from web.git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/intel/iwlwifi/
- restart after powering off for 30 seconds the machine.
- boot a clean ubuntu 24 from a usb
Lastly, I present a sequence of commands after which I fixed the issue for a week:
- change updates' source to https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu and reinstall the firmware (I was using the US source with http)
sudo apt-get clean
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
sudo apt-get -o Acquire::ForceIPv4=true -o Acquire::Retries=3 update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt autoremove
wget http://ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.17_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux-firmware_20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.17_amd64.deb
sudo reboot now
sudo apt-get clean
wget http://ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.17_amd64.deb && sudo dpkg -i linux-firmware_20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.17_amd64.deb
For a week, and I thought the problem was solved. Hours after another update (which did not contain firmware updates), while using bluetooth headphones to watch a streamed movie, the bluetooth disconnected, then the wifi went down, and the issue came back.
The file linux-firmware_20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.17_amd64.deb is not hosted anymore on the source I used.
Running again sudo dpkg -i linux-firmware_20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.17_amd64.deb results in the wifi applet to display, and work for a minute.
Running sudo dpkg -i linux-firmware_20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.19_amd64.deb results in the wifi applet to disappear, sometimes alongside the bluetooth one.
Booting from a ubuntu 22 usb results in wifi working, but I would prefer to keep this os.
To get a full report of my system I disconnected the Tethering USB, and ran wget -N -t 5 -T 10 https://github.com/UbuntuForums/wireless-info/raw/master/wireless-info && chmod +x wireless-info && sudo ./wireless-info
I posted the results here:
https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/JP5qshCDmF/
Update: after running sudo dpkg -i linux-firmware_20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.17_amd64.deb, reboot, disconnecting power source and flea power reset, it seems that I have working wifi, as long as I don't turn on bluetooth and do not update to the 2.19 firmware.
How do I proceed? from now?
Update: I turned on the pc, and in the matter of minutes the wifi was gone again: first troubles finding networks, then the applet disappeared.
I tried to update again (to 2.19), and reboot + flea power reset.
For now I have wifi again, but this process takes more than an hour to fix every time, and the fix is not guaranteed to last.