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EDIT 2: Apparently the problem is no more after I reinstalled Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with the official ISO. The kernel version is now 4.13.0-32-generic. Not sure what caused it. Maybe I shouldn't have upgraded the kernel. Maybe it's something to do with the Dell distribution of Ubuntu. Maybe it's my dualboot installation with Windows. Anyways, it seems to be solved for now.

I just bought Dell XPS 13 9370 Developer Edition. After running dist-upgrade, the startup process became somehow unbelievably slow, taking up to 100 seconds. Inpsecting the output of dmesg, I suspect that the Killer Wifi card might be causing problems. The following are the relevant outputs:

[    3.448012] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/cal-pci-0000:02:00.0.bin failed with error -2
[    3.448177] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-5.bin failed with error -2
[    3.448178] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: could not fetch firmware file 'ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-5.bin': -2
[    3.569873] input: DELL07E6:00 06CB:76AF Touchpad as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.1/i2c_designware.1/i2c-7/i2c-DELL07E6:00/0018:06CB:76AF.0001/input/input19
[    3.570012] hid-multitouch 0018:06CB:76AF.0001: input,hidraw0: I2C HID v1.00 Mouse [DELL07E6:00 06CB:76AF] on i2c-DELL07E6:00
[    5.402962] pci_bus 0000:05: busn_res: [bus 05] is released
[    5.403000] pci_bus 0000:06: busn_res: [bus 06] is released
[    5.403022] pci_bus 0000:07: busn_res: [bus 07] is released
[    5.403044] pci_bus 0000:08: busn_res: [bus 08] is released
[    5.403064] pci_bus 0000:04: busn_res: [bus 04-08] is released
[    5.677930] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: qca6174 hw3.2 (0x05030000, 0x00340aff sub 1a56:143a) fw WLAN.RM.2.0-00180-QCARMSWPZ-1 fwapi 4 bdapi 2 htt-ver 3.26 wmi-op 4 htt-op 3 cal otp max-sta 32 raw 0 hwcrypto 1 features wowlan,ignore-otp,no-4addr-pad
[    5.677933] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: debug 0 debugfs 1 tracing 1 dfs 0 testmode 0
[    5.747015] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x6c
[    5.747017] ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map
[    5.747019] ath: Country alpha2 being used: 00
[    5.747019] ath: Regpair used: 0x6c
[    5.751128] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0 wlp2s0: renamed from wlan0
[   93.093951] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[   93.093953] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[   93.093957] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized

Specifically, the line ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: could not fetch firmware file 'ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-5.bin': -2 seems problematic yet I'm not sure how to fix it.

I've tried both kernel versions 94 and 112 without success. Unfortunately I've purged the original kernel so I can't test it out with the original kernel again.

Is there any solution to the firmware problem with this wireless card? Or is there some way I can retrieve the original kernel version, install it and try if it solves the problem?

EDIT: The output of systemd-analyze blame

      2.396s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
      2.140s postgresql@9.5-main.service
      1.269s rtkit-daemon.service
       455ms dev-nvme0n1p3.device
       372ms docker.service
       324ms vboxdrv.service
       218ms gpu-manager.service
       129ms lightdm.service
       127ms accounts-daemon.service
       118ms ModemManager.service
xji
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  • In fact, the driver goes further along to load appropriate firmware; viz: ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: qca6174 hw3.2 (0x05030000, 0x00340aff<snip> We see nothing unusual here. These are not the droids you're looking for. – chili555 Jan 26 '18 at 16:40
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    Please edit your question to add the result of the terminal command: systemd-analyze blame You probably only need the first ten lines. – chili555 Jan 26 '18 at 16:45
  • @chili555 Thanks for the suggestion. I've edited the question and added the output. – xji Jan 26 '18 at 16:51
  • I found a related question at https://askubuntu.com/questions/615006/ubuntu-15-04-network-manager-causing-slow-boot and will see if applying suggestions there helps. – xji Jan 26 '18 at 16:53
  • Except that your NetworkManager-wait-online.service takes 2.3 seconds; that's a loonnnng way from 100 seconds. But try it and find out; it's easy to undo. – chili555 Jan 26 '18 at 16:57
  • You're right. Disabling it doesn't seem to have done much. – xji Jan 26 '18 at 17:00
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – chili555 Jan 26 '18 at 18:08
  • Apparently the problem was resolved after I reinstalled Ubuntu with the official ISO and now the kernel version is 4.13.0-32-generic. Not sure what caused the problem. Could be dualbooting, Dell version of Ubuntu, way too new kernel etc... Thanks for your help anyways! – xji Jan 26 '18 at 21:52

0 Answers0