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I've recently purchased a lenovo thinkpad e480 and have attempted to access the internet through the wifi manager. However, in 18.04, there is no option for WiFI networks and when I try to access the wifi settings it says there is no wifi adapter. I've also run iwconfig, with emp3s0 and lo returning as 'no wireless extensions'. The problem persists when I try to run the laptop on 16.04. When I run sudo lshw -C Network, it does return an Ethernet interface and I can view a few pcis through sudo lshw. I've tried running through the wifi troubleshooting on the ubuntu website and cannot find the pci models in their supported chipsets. Could this mean the chipset isn't supported? If so, am I forced to buy a physical wifi adapter?

Thanks in advance

edit: Results of rfkill list all

1: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: No
Hard blocked: No
2: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: No
Hard blocked: No

Results of sudo lshw -C network 

*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: RTL811/8168/8411 PRI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Running lspci returns several pci bridges and the ethernet controller from the previous command.

dropTableUsers
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  • Please edit your question to add the result of the terminal commands: lspci -nnk | grep 0280 -A3 and also: rfkill list all Welcome to Ask Ubuntu. – chili555 Jun 09 '18 at 01:19
  • thanks for the welcome! I tried running the lspci command but there was no output. I did edit in the rfkill command though. – dropTableUsers Jun 09 '18 at 02:12
  • Is wireless disabled in the BIOS? http://download.lenovo.com/km/media/images/HT071417/8f357c67e94e41eabfafc9a2430f0a11.jpg – chili555 Jun 09 '18 at 13:11
  • @chili555 I checked it and it said that the ethernet interface was enabled. – dropTableUsers Jun 09 '18 at 19:29
  • And how about the wireless; perhaps called by Lenovo WLAN? – chili555 Jun 09 '18 at 21:09
  • Wireless LAN (I assume translates into wlan) is enabled in the i/o port access. – dropTableUsers Jun 09 '18 at 21:18
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    We see no evidence of an included wireless adapter. I suggest that you question the seller or buy an external device. – chili555 Jun 10 '18 at 01:14
  • So I was afk for a few minutes to take a shower and the wifi miraculously started working. Basically, wifi works perfect, although it has a low range. Now when I run iwconfig, there are three results. The first two don't have wireless extensions, but the last one enumerates all the data. I'm not sure what exactly I did to fix the problem, but I know I used a wired connection to perform sudo apt-get update. That may have fixed the problem, but I'm not sure why it's working fine now – dropTableUsers Jun 11 '18 at 17:48
  • Wow! We are glad it's working by whatever means. Have fun! – chili555 Jun 11 '18 at 17:57

1 Answers1

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The Lenovo e480 comes with an Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 wifi adapter as far as I know. This should be supported in kernels 4.2+ but perhaps you need to do a little research into how to get it up and running.

Here is the link to Intel's page for downloading the required firmware with some instructions:

Intel Linux Support

Stephen Rauch
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C. Sederqvist
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