Backport for iwlwifi

Question

I am currently new to deeper system administration with ubuntu. My new PC has compability problems with ubuntu (to be exact: the WIFI).

http://forum.gigabyte.us/thread/4007/linux-wifi-driver-aorus-gaming

In this thread my problem is solved with the last post, but I don't know how to install the backported iwlwifi driver and then where to find the config.

I am using kubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Thanks for your help!

Solution 1

I solved it with upgrading to kernel 4.17.1 from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

I installed

• linux-headers-4.17.1-041701_4.17.1-041701.201806111730_all.deb
• linux-image-unsigned-4.17.1-041701-generic_4.17.1-041701.201806111730_amd64.deb
• linux-modules-4.17.1-041701-generic_4.17.1-041701.201806111730_amd64.deb

After that my WIFI-connection was successfully established and the driver works as expected.

Solution 2

To use iwlwifi backports you could

sudo apt-get install git build-essential
git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/backport-iwlwifi.git
cd backport-iwlwifi
make defconfig-iwlwifi-public
sed -i 's/CPTCFG_IWLMVM_VENDOR_CMDS=y/# CPTCFG_IWLMVM_VENDOR_CMDS is not set/' .config
make -j4
sudo make install

dmesg | grep iwl

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/

Update for January 2020 The package backport-iwlwifi-dkms is in the Bionic repos and is very similar to the above, this will automatically build new drivers when a newer kernel is installed. There is also a PPA that will have a newer version than what is in the repo, to install this do

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-hwe-team/backport-iwlwifi
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install backport-iwlwifi-dkms

Solution 3

Typing sudo apt install backport-iwlwifi-dkms on terminal resolved the issue.

Solution 4

Note: as of Linux 5, backporting iwlwifi is not necessary and may actually break network adapters, both the Intel one and others, due to a conflict with versions of dependency kernel modules such as mac80211.ko and others. (Tested on Debian 10)

View more solutions

Comments

[Mr. White]

Did this compile on a ubuntu/debian system? With debian unstable/buster, it gives lots of compiler errors, due to 'versions' file and not finding the linux-headers.

[Jeremy31]

@Mr.White you might need to install the linux-headers-$(uname -r) as it is installed by default in Ubuntu. In Ubuntu the package is called linux-headers-generic

[Tobias Bergkvist]

If you are getting this error: error: ‘struct iwl_fw_runtime’ has no member named ‘geo_enabled’, you probably want to do git clone https://github.com/intel/backport-iwlwifi and cd backport-iwlwifi/iwlwifi-stack-dev instead