No network, no usb after kernel update in 14.04

Question

Today I did a regular update for my Ubuntu 14.04 installation on my Dell XPS 13 and the update included a new kernel (I guess it was 3.19.0-65). I noticed that the wireless stopped working after the update and thought that it would be a good idea to switch to an older kernel but it seems that somehow I have messed things up.

The status is: I still have kernels on my machine (3.19.0-65, 3.19.0-64 and 3.19.0-51) and it boots to unity. Screen and touchpad are working, all looks nice, but: It does say that it does not have any network devices at all, so I am totally offline with the laptop.

iwconfig simply gives

lo       no wireless extensions

and nothing else. I found the page My wireless/WiFi connection does not work. What information is needed to diagnose the issue? to diagnose, downloaded the script and tried to transfer it to my laptop with a memory sitck. But my laptop will not even find a usb memory stick anymore! With no network and not usb I am kind of stuck here…

So I am looking for:

• How do I get my machine up and running again?
• If the system is broken beyond repair, how could I still get a backup and a reinstall?

Solution 1

Had a similar issue after a kernel upgrade: no network, no usb (except the old kernel worked as before).

In this case the linux-image-extra package for that kernel was not installed, so drivers were missing.

To check it's installed:

$ uname -r
4.4.0-45-generic
$ dpkg -l | grep '^ii' | grep `uname -r`
ii  linux-headers-4.4.0-45-generic             4.4.0-45.66~14.04.1                                                  i386         
ii  linux-image-4.4.0-45-generic               4.4.0-45.66~14.04.1                                                  i386        
ii  linux-image-extra-4.4.0-45-generic         4.4.0-45.66~14.04.1                                                  i386        

If the linux-image-extra package is missing in the list above install it with:

$ sudo apt-get install linux-image-extra-`uname -r`

Solution 2

I have exactly the same issue. I run 14.04 on a 2016 XPS 13 Developer-Edition, and after this morning's update the network menu does not contain any wireless device. Wired connection is working fine.

As a workaround, after displaying the GRUB menu and booting into the previous kernel (3.19.0-64), the wireless works as before for me.

Possibly related questions here and here. The same issue has been reported on the Dell forum here. If someone has a forum account, please point them to the various reports on askubuntu. I tried to sign up, but failed. This should also be reported at launchpad.

Comments

[Dirk]

Thanks for pointing me to the bug. Unfortunately this does not solve my problem. When I tried to revert to the old kernel, I must have messed up something else. I try to boot from a stick and see what can be done...

[gutschilla]

Oh, just saw that bas-swinckels did the same. Anyhow, I'll keep the answer here

[nmgeek]

For my kernel I needed the linux-modules-extra instead: "sudo apt-get install linux-modules-extra-uname -r"