No Wifi after upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04

Question

since 16.04 reached EOL I wanted to upgrade to 18.04 but after automatically restarting at the end of the upgrade, my laptop (Dell XPS 13 9360) did not connect to the internet. The wifi settings state "No wi-fi adapter found". Pinging anything gives me connect: Network is unreachable and running rfkill list all only shows Bluetooth but no wifi. The only output I get is

0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no. No mention of Wireless LAN. Output of lshw -C network

*-network  
     description: Network controller  
     product: QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter  
     vendor: Qualcomm Atheros  
     physical id: 0  
     bus info: pci@0000:3a:00.0  
     version: 32  
     width: 64 bits
     clock: 33MHz  
     capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
     configuration: driver=ath10k_pci latency=0
     resources: irq:135 memory:dc000000-dc1fffff

Output for lspci -knn | grep Net -A3:

3a:00.0 Network controller [02880]: Qualcomm Atheros QA6174 802.11ac 
        Wireless Network Adapter [168c:003e] (rev32)
        Subsystem: Bigfoot Networks, Inc. QA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [1a56:1535]
        Kernel driver in use: ath10k_pci
        Kernel modules: ath10k_pci
3b:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS525A PCI Express Card Reader [10ec:525a] (rev 01)

And dmesg | grep ath10k:

[     4.347504] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[     4.351838] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: pci irq msi oper_irq_mode 2 irq_mode 0 reset_mode 0 
[     4.642560] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/pre-cal-pci-0000:3a:00.0.bin failed with error -2
[     4.642572] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/cal-pci-0000:3a:00.0.bin failed with error -2
[     4.643324] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QA6174/hw3.0/firmware-6.bin failed with error -2
[     4.643341] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QA6174/hw3.0/firmware-5.bin failed with error -2
[     4.643347] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QA6174/hw3.0/firmware-4.bin failed with error -2
[     4.643353] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QA6174/hw3.0/firmware-3.bin failed with error -2
[     4.643359] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QA6174/hw3.0/firmware-2.bin failed with error -2
[     4.643361] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: Failed to find firmware-N.bin (N between 2 and 6) from ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0: -2
[     4.643364] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: could not fetch firmware files (-2)
[     4.643366] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: could not probe fw (-2)

Also, the command sudo iw dev gives me no output at all but trying to install iw gives me iw is already the newest version (4.14-0.1).

I tried the first method from here, downloaded the iso on my phone, transfered it on my laptop but was not able to mount it as running sudo mount -o loop ubuntu-* /media/cdrom gave me mount: ubuntu-*/media/cdrom: can't find in /etc/fstab. I understand that the formatting is different in /etc/fstab and that's why it can't follow but I don't know how to fix it on my own.

I'm sorry if this is a mess, this is the first time I couldn't fix a problem with the questions already solved and need guidance as I am as dense as a neutron star when it comes to computers.

UPDATE: After running sudo apt install --reinstall linux-firmware (and upgrading to 20.04 beforehand) wifi shows up in drop down menu and is listed when rfkill list all is run (with soft and hard block set to no).

Now the output of sudo iw dev is

phy#0
Interface wlp58s0
    ifindex 2
    wdev 0x1
    addr 9c:b6:d0:f5:2c:fd
    type managed
    txpower 0.00 dBm
    multicast TXQ:
        qsz-byt qsz-pkt flows   drops   marks   overlmt hashcol tx-bytes    tx-packets
        0       0       0       0       0       0       0       0           0

And dmesg | grep ath10k changed to:

[    4.173183] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    4.175431] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: pci irq msi oper_irq_mode 2 irq_mode 0 reset_mode 0
[    4.465655] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: qca6174 hw3.2 target 0x05030000 chip_id 0x00340aff sub 1a56:1535
[    4.465674] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: kconfig debug 0 debugfs 1 tracing 1 dfs 0 testmode 0
[    4.469191] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: firmware ver WLAN.RM.4.4.1-00140-QCARMSWPZ-1 api 6 features wowlan,ignore-otp,mfp crc32 29eb8ca1
[    4.559357] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: board_file api 2 bmi_id N/A crc32 4ac0889b
[    4.658875] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: unsupported HTC service id: 1536
[    4.685903] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: htt-ver 3.60 wmi-op 4 htt-op 3 cal otp max-sta 32 raw 0 hwcrypto 1
[    6.224867] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0 wlp58s0: renamed from wlan0
[    7.382626] ath10k_pci 0000:3a:00.0: unsupported HTC service id: 1536

I am still missing the drivers for my wifi adapter and currently have no clue where to find them.

UPDATE 2: I came across this and followed the steps and still nothing. The outputs for dmesg and iw dev remain the same BUT now rfkill list all says that my wifi is soft blocked:

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
1: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

and to be honest, I don't know if this is a step forward or back.

Does this answer your question? Ubuntu 18.04 No WiFi adapter found [Dell Inspiron 3542.] — graham, May 04 '21 at 18:17
Sadly not @24601 as their wifi got listed in rfkill, so their solution didn't do anything. — Voo M, May 04 '21 at 20:30
Does sudo modprobe ath9k fix the issue? Also, what is the output of lspci -knn | grep Net -A3 and sudo lshw -C network and dmesg | grep ath9k? — mchid, May 05 '21 at 04:14
@mchid sudo modprobe ath9k did not fix the issue and dmesg | grep ath9k does not give me anything; will edit the rest of the outputs in question with output of dmesg | grep ath10k instead. I hope that works as well - does it make sense to try sudo modprobe ath10k? — Voo M, May 05 '21 at 07:53
@VooM Yeah, that is a good idea although, it would be sudo modprobe ath10k_pci However, it looks like you're missing some firmware files. The linux-firmware package is listed as optional so it might not be installed. See my answer for a solution. — mchid, May 06 '21 at 04:48

mchid · Answer 1 · 2021-05-09T17:57:08.807

The error states that it's missing the firmware files. The firmware files for ath10k_pci are included in the linux-firmware package. This package is listed as "optional" so it's not installed by default.

If you have internet access on the computer, you can install the package using the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --reinstall linux-firmware

If you do not have internet access on the computer, you can download the following deb file (or you can find the latest version here):

http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.173.20_all.deb

Next, transfer the file to your Ubuntu computer and cd into the directory that contains the deb file.

Then, run the following command to install the deb file:

sudo apt install --reinstall ./linux-firmware_*_all.deb

or you could use dpkg considering there are no dependencies:

sudo dpkg -i ./linux-firmware_*_all.deb

Finally, reboot for good measure to make sure the changes are applied.

EDIT:

Now that your problem is fixed, you can remove the soft block. Soft blocked means that it's blocked by software. All you have to do is run the following command:

sudo rfkill unblock all

Thanks, that helped! I tethered my phone via USB to get internet access on my laptop (even upgraded to 20.04 in hopes of solving anything - it didn't); I didn't know that that was a thing until someone pointed that out in the r/ubuntu subreddit where I linked my question from here. I installed linux-firmware and now WLAN shows up under rfkill and something comes up when I enter sudo iw dev. Also, the output of dmesg | grep ath10k_pci has changed. I am going to add the changes in my question above. — Voo M, May 07 '21 at 17:05
@VooM Please refer to the addendum at the end of the answer. — mchid, May 09 '21 at 17:58

No Wifi after upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04

1 Answers1