Arch Linux

john-soda

Member

Registered: 2017-05-20

Posts: 14

Intel Advanced-N 6205 AGN. Sometimes fails to load firmware.

Since a couple of months I have often problems with my wifi and it annoys me more and more.

Mostly after direct reboots, the wifi can't connect to a network.  The weird thing is, I can search and find wifi-connections but I can't connect.

When it's not possible to connect to a wifi network, the only thing that is helping, is to shutdown the machine, wait a little, boot the machine again. Before login, wait a little and then mostly it works. When I do a reboot instead of a full shutdown, it mostly it stays broken.

Here is my kernel log

Everytime when I have to hurry my wifi doesn't work! So annoying!

I have a ThinkPad x230 with an Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6205 AGN, REV=0xB0 wifi Card.
My Kernel is 4.14.
And I think, the problems began with the Intel Spectre and meltdown Patches. But I'm not sure.

Help would be soooo much appreciated!

John

Last edited by john-soda (2018-05-29 20:18:57)

PootisBird

Member

Registered: 2014-04-16

Posts: 125

Re: Intel Advanced-N 6205 AGN. Sometimes fails to load firmware.

I used to have problems with same wifi card. Now it mostly craps itself on shutdown, which is not an issue unless a wall of text on shutdown is.
Related link: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=190281

My workaround was to create a primitive shell script. Thankfully I had no issues at runtime for a few months not. Run it when dmesg is flooded with iwlwifi logs.

sudo rmmod iwldvm && sudo rmmod iwlwifi && sudo modprobe iwlwifi && echo "gg shintel"

Please excuse my profanity, it was really frustrating when wifi just died for no reason, alias invoking this long command had even more profanity in it.

bashM0nk3y

Member

From: the big she-bang

Registered: 2018-05-26

Posts: 49

Re: Intel Advanced-N 6205 AGN. Sometimes fails to load firmware.

T470 (20JN) w/ Intel Corp. Wireless 8260 here, and something very similar happened to me on Plasma in the past. So far tho, at least while running arch, this hasn't been a problem.

You did install and enable the

intel-ucode

package right? Just install via pacman and do a

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg #or whatever the correct path is for your machine.

My workaround was to use

wicd

along with

wicd-gtk

. For some reason, I never could get the

wicd-kde

widget to work, but the *-gtk version worked great.
Might need to

...# systemctl enable wicd.service && systemctl enable wicd-daemon.service

and

...# systemctl reload dbus.service

.

I've also used

connman

and

cmst

in the past. It's at least worth looking into while you work on getting NetworkManager straightened out. Fyi, cmst is a front-end for connman iirc.

Last edited by bashM0nk3y (2018-05-26 18:53:18)

john-soda

Member

Registered: 2017-05-20

Posts: 14

Re: Intel Advanced-N 6205 AGN. Sometimes fails to load firmware.

@bashM0nk3y
I have the intel-ucode 20180425-1 package installed.
Thanks very much for your help!
I'm looking for a solution without using a different network manager.

@Pootisbird
Your command

sudo rmmod iwldvm && sudo rmmod iwlwifi && sudo modprobe iwlwifi && echo "gg shintel"

made my wifi work without rebooting! Thank you so much!

Everytime my wifi don't work,

dmesg | grep wifi

shows me

[   54.027231] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Start IWL Event Log Dump: nothing in log
[   54.027241] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Fw not loaded - dropping CMD: 10
[   54.027243] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Error clearing ASSOC_MSK on BSS (-5)
[   54.052466] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0
[   54.351445] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0
[   54.450795] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0
[   59.573364] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Failed to load firmware chunk!
[   59.573375] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Could not load the [0] uCode section
[   59.585755] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Failed to run INIT ucode: -110
[   59.585796] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Unable to initialize device.

so it's definitely a problem with loading the firmware.
How can I get more information about it?
I really would like to fix the problem and not steadily have to use a workaround.

But I'm so glad that I don't have to reboot everytime until my wifi works again!

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,373

Re: Intel Advanced-N 6205 AGN. Sometimes fails to load firmware.

From the closed upstream bug report https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=190281#c13 a bisection locating the bad commit is required before upstream will look at the issue again.

john-soda

Member

Registered: 2017-05-20

Posts: 14

Re: Intel Advanced-N 6205 AGN. Sometimes fails to load firmware.

Oh Crap! How to manage, what can I do, to find the bad commit?

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,373

Re: Intel Advanced-N 6205 AGN. Sometimes fails to load firmware.

Has any kernel you have used on the system not had the issue?  ( Trying to determine how big the search area is. )

john-soda

Member

Registered: 2017-05-20

Posts: 14

Re: Intel Advanced-N 6205 AGN. Sometimes fails to load firmware.

Like I wrote before,

And I think, the problems began with the Intel Spectre and meltdown Patches. But I'm not sure.

with Kernel 4.9 and 4.14 I had no problem since, I guess, in January the Spectre and meltdown Patches arrived.
But in Bugzilla, persons describe the same problem with 4.8 and 4.9.
I will try different kernels as soon as I find time for it.