Arch Linux

ksbhaskar

Member

Registered: 2015-05-26

Posts: 3

iwlwifi could not load the 0 ucode section with 4.19 kernels

I have a System76 Oryx P3, which ran Arch just fine till the kernel upgraded to 4.19. Then about ⅔ or ¾ of the time, on bootup or resume after suspend, it would fail to find the wifi hardware, with the following error messages on a console logged in as root:

iwlwifi 0000:6e:00.0: Could not load the [0] uCode section
iwlwifi 0000:6e:00.0: Failed to start INIT uCode: -5
iwlwifi 0000:6e:00.0: Failed to run INIT uCode: -5
iwlwifi 0000:6e:00.0: Failed to start RT uCode: -5

This keeps repeating every few sections, and in the desktop (LXQT) it shows up as no device found for wifi.

I switched to the hardened kernel when it was still on 4.18, and wifi worked correctly (as it has done for the last year). Over the weekend, the hardened kernel switched to 4.19, and again the wifi device is not detected.

ksbhaskar

Member

Registered: 2015-05-26

Posts: 3

Re: iwlwifi could not load the 0 ucode section with 4.19 kernels

Most peculiar, but after updating the BIOS with the System 76 BIOS updating tool, the problem has not occurred  in the last few days. So it seems to be some interaction between the 4.19 kernel (maybe Spectre & Meltdown fixes?) and the old BIOS. If it fails again, will post a follow-up.