Lenovo Yoga 3 14 Qualcomm Atheros device 168c:0041 rev 20 Not working

Question

I am writing this post out of desperation. I have been trying to make my wifi run on a freshly installed Ubuntu 15.10 for the past 3 days. Nothing helped. I literally tried anything on the internet that there was, I tried installing backports and new firmware, I tried installing different drivers, I tried installing bcmwl-kernel-source an so forth and so on... Nothing worked.. Only once after I installed new backports and rebooted the wifi magically worked and I was able to connect to the internet and even download updates and stuff but after reboot same story. I can't see the "enable wifi" button in network manager and I can't see any networks whatsoever. My machine is lenovo yoga 3 14 and my wireless card is qalcomm atheros qca6147. Also, when I run rfkill list, I get ideapad_laptop wlan, which is neither soft blocked nor hard blocked. Is there currently any solution to this problem ? If anyone can help me I will be very thankful!!!

P.S. I installed Ubuntu 15.10 dual boot alongside windows 10.

Please [edit] your question and add output of lspci -knn | grep Net -A2; uname -r terminal command. — Pilot6, Jan 22 '16 at 20:36
@Pilot6 Here's the output of the command: 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros Device [168c:0041] (rev 20) Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:3545] 4.2.0-16-generic — ridiculous1995, Jan 22 '16 at 21:33
@Jeremy31 I tried running this into terminal and it showed nothing. I am pretty positive that I have installed dkms though. Let me go back and see — ridiculous1995, Jan 23 '16 at 19:56
@Jeremy31 I have dkms installed. I was able to use a friend's phone to tether and had internet for a few minutes. (my phone can't tether for some reason) — ridiculous1995, Jan 23 '16 at 20:03
See my answer Follow instructions under edited to add for installing the firmware from the github site — Jeremy31, Jan 23 '16 at 20:17
Hi! I tried installink the dkms file that you provided, however I got the following error message:
ERROR (dkms apport): unable to determine source package for backath10k-dkms Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 4.2.0-16-generic (x86_64) Consult /var/lib/dkms/backath10k/2.0/build/make.log for more information. — ridiculous1995, Jan 24 '16 at 00:57
sudo cp -r /var/lib/dkms/backath10k/2.0/build/QCA6174/ /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/ Reboot — Jeremy31, Jan 24 '16 at 15:44

chili555 · Answer 1 · 2016-01-24T13:57:46.903

0

Please download this file to your desktop: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/backports/stable/v4.3/backports-4.3-1.tar.gz Right-click it and select 'Extract Here.' Now, in the terminal:

cd ~/Desktop/backports-4.3.1
make defconfig-ath10k
make
sudo make install

You will have built the driver for your current kernel version only. When Update Manager installs a later kernel version, also known as linux-image, after the requested reboot, re-compile:

cd ~/Desktop/backports-4.3.1
make clean
make defconfig-ath10k
make
sudo make install

Please retain the files and these instructions for that time.

This device also requires firmware. Please download this package to your desktop: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.149.3_all.deb

Now, back to the terminal:

cd ~/Desktop
sudo dpkg -i linux*.deb

Reboot and your wireless should be working.

Let's try a driver parameter. From the terminal:

sudo -i
echo "options ath10k_core skip_otp=y" > /etc/modprobe.d/ath10k.conf
exit

Let's also remove bcmwl-kernel-source:

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source

Reboot and tell us if there is any improvement.

In your paste, we see this:

[ 2.295514] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QCA6174/hw2.1/board-pci-168c:0041:17aa:3545.bin failed with error -2 [ 2.295521] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: failed to load spec board file, falling back to generic: -2 [ 3.479967] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: firmware crashed! (uuid c3a5f1c6-425d-45ac-94df-2d6f6096c816)

Let's try a different and, perhaps newer firmware file. In a terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware.git
cd ath10k-firmware/QCA6174/hw2.1
sudo cp *  /lib/firmware/QCA6174/hw2.1
cd /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw2.1
sudo mv firmware-5.bin_SW_RM.1.1.1-00157-QCARMSWPZ-1  firmware-5.bin

Reboot and tell us if it is working now. If not, give us a new paste:

dmesg | grep ath

edited Jan 24 '16 at 13:57

answered Jan 22 '16 at 20:47

chili555

60,188

I didn't install a new kernel version. I just installed updates from the update manager in Ubuntu. :) Last night I decided to reinstall Ubuntu and installed the latest backports and everything but this time I couldn't make it to work. It's still not working. – ridiculous1995 Jan 22 '16 at 21:14
What does this report? dmesg | grep ath? – chili555 Jan 22 '16 at 21:45
I tried running it a couple of times and it didn't do anything, it just goes to a new line in terminal as if I pressed enter without any commands. – ridiculous1995 Jan 22 '16 at 21:54
Please try: sudo modprobe ath10k_pci && dmesg | grep ath. – chili555 Jan 22 '16 at 21:56
hmmm That's weird. It's still not displaying anything.. – ridiculous1995 Jan 22 '16 at 22:12
What backports package did you install? – chili555 Jan 22 '16 at 22:14
@chili555 some of the backports newer than 20151120 have no defconfig-ath10k or defconfig-wifi option – Jeremy31 Jan 22 '16 at 22:46
I don't really remember which one I install, because to be honest I installed a couple one after the other to try which one will work. Can you recommend me a package in particular that I should try ? – ridiculous1995 Jan 22 '16 at 23:37
Please try this: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/backports/2015/12/18/backports-20151218.tar.gz Do you need a step-by-step? – chili555 Jan 23 '16 at 00:17
What should be my first step ? make defconfig-wifi or make defconfig-ath10k – ridiculous1995 Jan 23 '16 at 02:51
Please see my edit above in a few minutes and please excuse my mis-step; I appreciate the heads-up, @Jeremy31 – chili555 Jan 23 '16 at 16:13
Okay, I did everything by the book and it still did not work. Do you think I should reinstall Ubuntu and try again ? It might be interfering with some other packages that I installed like bcmwl-kernel-source or I don't know. I know it's a software issue for sure, because I was able to run it 2 days ago for a split second but after reboot it stopped working again. – ridiculous1995 Jan 23 '16 at 19:51
Please see my further edit in a few minutes. I doubt that a re-install is needed so far. – chili555 Jan 23 '16 at 21:06
I still get nothing. – ridiculous1995 Jan 24 '16 at 00:43
Please run: dmesg | grep ath and paste the result here and give us the link: http://paste.ubuntu.com – chili555 Jan 24 '16 at 01:15
This is what I got - http://paste.ubuntu.com/14625890/ – ridiculous1995 Jan 24 '16 at 01:24
Please see my edit above. – chili555 Jan 24 '16 at 13:55
Okay tried, rebooted and didn't work. I still got the same message - http://paste.ubuntu.com/14641012/ – ridiculous1995 Jan 24 '16 at 16:27

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 29 '16 at 00:27

I think the issue is the firmware as your pastes show firmware revision numbers from kvalo's github

cd /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9174/hw2.1
sudo rm firmware-5.bin
sudo rm board.bin
sudo wget https://github.com/atondwal/ath10k-firmware/blob/master/ath10k/QCA6164/hw2.1/firmware-5.bin?raw=true
sudo mv firmware-5bin?raw=true firmware-5.bin
sudo wget https://github.com/atondwal/ath10k-firmware/blob/master/ath10k/QCA6164/hw2.1/board.bin?raw=true
sudo mv board.bin?raw=tru board.bin

Reboot, if it doesn't work post the paste.ubuntu.com link for dmesg | grep ath; lshw -c net

Lenovo Yoga 3 14 Qualcomm Atheros device 168c:0041 rev 20 Not working

2 Answers2