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I looked and read through the other topics about iwlwifi and the Intel 6 AX201 (or similar), and yet I cannot find a final answer to this.

In my case I've done some research and troubleshooting on my own, arriving to weird conclusions.

In my case, on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, my wifi works but at same point, randomly without anything specific happening (usually once a day), wifi just disappears.What I mean is that Ubuntu says there's no wifi adpater.

Lshw returns network unclaimed, and looking online, I found that removing iwlmvm and iwlwifi with rmmod, and then reloading them with modprobe, then lshw returns the network adapter as claimed, and also lspci shows me the adapter correctly.

Unloading and reloading the kernel modules works the first time my network goes down, but then shortly after it goes down again. Ubuntu says no network adapter, but this second time it's claimed with lshw, visible in lspci, modules are all there, unloading and reloading them leads to no solution, BUT if I do a rfkill list I can see only the Bluetooth and not the WiFi (that is visible in there when it works). Only way is rebooting.

Grepping dmesg for iwlwifi, I can see the firmware loaded is QuZ-a0-hr-b0-66.ucode

I already tried renaming it so it's not used, another version gets used but the problem happens again.

Does anyone has any idea or suggestion? I don't understand how Ubuntu says there's no network adapter but I can see it claimed in lshw and listed in lspci. It's there and seen, but somehow not getting used as valid wifi adapter, and not listed in rfkill list.

opoloko
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  • The fact that a hardware device is listed in lshw doesn’t prove that it also has a working driver and, in your case, appropriate firmware. In order to see why and how your device drops its driver, after it does so, please run the terminal command: sudo dmesg | grep -e wlp -e iwl As the output may be lengthy, paste the result here and give us the link. http://paste.ubuntu.com Also, please revert renaming the firmware file. – chili555 Jun 07 '22 at 00:34
  • @guiverc you’re right, this was installed just a few days ago, it’s ubuntu 22.04 LTS, all updated to latest versions of anything with apt. – opoloko Jun 07 '22 at 07:58
  • @guiverc edited the question thanks! – opoloko Jun 07 '22 at 08:41
  • @chili555 I already reverted all the renaming days ago after seeing it was not working. It happened this morning and so please find the whole log here https://pastebin.com/r4G704bS – opoloko Jun 07 '22 at 08:44
  • This morning I expanded my script that was removing and then reloading iwlmvm and iwlwifi, as doing lsmod I discovered that two other modules (mac80211 and cfg80211) are connected with iwlmvm and iwlwifi (from the name they're obviously related to wifi!). So I did rmmod of iwlmvm and also mac80211, and magically that was enough to have both reloaded by iwlwifi (that I didn't remove) and wifi is now back without rebooting. Still is not obviously solving the real origin of the problem, that's what I'd like to solve. – opoloko Jun 07 '22 at 08:49
  • What does this tell us? ls -al /usr/lib/firmware/ | grep QuZ-a0-hr-b0 In my fully updated 22.04 system, I have -66-68 and -71. – chili555 Jun 07 '22 at 12:55
  • Also, please check my troubleshooting steps here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1353705/ubuntu-20-04-wifi-keeps-dropping/1353723#1353723 In particular, I wonder if the firmware error is caused when the router changes the channel or changes from 2.4 gHz to 5 gHz. – chili555 Jun 07 '22 at 13:07
  • @chili555 I have more drivers in /lib/firmware for that name: 48,50,53,55,59,62,63,66,67,68,71 The version .66 is the one always used. As for the router changing frequency that doesn't happen as the laptop is connected to a 2.4ghz, and the channel as well is fixed. My other Mac and Windows machines work, so it's definitely something specific to Linux more than the router....although it seems many have it but no final solution. Will check now your page and will report back. – opoloko Jun 07 '22 at 13:33
  • @chili555 does it help to try install backport iwlwifi dkms ? At the moment all solutions fail, even my script that removes and reload modules, works only once or twice, then is not able to resuscitate it anymore. I also changed the power safe mode to 2 (disabled), nothing really works reliably. – opoloko Jun 08 '22 at 10:23
  • It costs nothing but a few minutes of time to try it. Then reboot and check dmesg for the issue: Microcode SW error detected. Restarting 0x0. I would still like to see the ls -al from my comment above to see if the size of -66.ucode is different suggesting that the file is corrupted. If backport doesn't work, it is easy to revert. – chili555 Jun 08 '22 at 13:35
  • @chili555 sure thing, this is the output from the ls-al on the firmwares: https://pastebin.com/5HWKuLaS About the backport...I'm a bit concerned as I read it could break that wifi or other modules wifi (at the moment I'm using a usb tplink as backup and works perfectly). How do I revert? When I install backport does it overwrite normal one and I have then to reinstall it to revert? My kernel is 5.15.0-35-generic – opoloko Jun 08 '22 at 17:19
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – chili555 Jun 08 '22 at 18:01
  • I have the exact same problem, just it doesn't start again when I reboot, it kinda decides for itself when to appear and when not. My dmesg is different, it says: Failed to start RT ucode: -110 and Failed to start INIT ucode: -110 – Full Nov 21 '22 at 16:40

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After now weeks, I can confirm (as I did in the chat) that the problem disappeared once I got rid of gnome related stuff. I first moved to Sway still managed by Gnome, and I noticed the problem was not happening as often, just very rarely. I fell in love with Sway so much that eventually I now disabled even GDM so I manage everything directly from shell. I boot in my user, simply launch directly Sway (so I'm on a barebone wayland with just Sway and without any related gnome stuff in background), and the problem disappeared completely. My feeling is that something related to network management of the Gnome system was working not too well with the wifi adapter. Got rid of Gnome completely, and network is super stable (without even saying how much faster and lighter is everything). So my solution was: get rid of Gnome.

opoloko
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