No Wifi upon installation of 18.04

Question

I have a similar question to WiFi not working after installing Ubuntu 18.04 but I have different hardware. My machine is an acer aspire 4755G with a Broadcom wifi. Here's the hardware info I collected:

$ sudo lshw -C network; lshw
 *-network DISABLED
       description: Wireless interface
       product: BCM43227 802.11b/g/n
       vendor: Broadcom Limited
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: wlp3s0
       version: 00
       serial: cc:af:78:73:68:e0
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=6.30.223.271 (r587334) latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
       resources: irq:17 memory:f3a00000-f3a03fff
 *-network
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: NetLink BCM57785 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
       vendor: Broadcom Limited
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       logical name: enp4s0f0
       version: 10
       serial: 20:6a:8a:50:73:0e
       size: 1Gbit/s
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi msix pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.137 duplex=full firmware=sb ip=192.168.1.231 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=1Gbit/s
       resources: irq:19 memory:f3800000-f380ffff memory:f3810000-f381ffff memory:cfa00000-cfa007ff

$ lspci -nn -d 14e4:
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Limited BCM43227 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4358]
04:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Limited NetLink BCM57785 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:16b5] (rev 10)
04:00.1 SD Host controller [0805]: Broadcom Limited BCM57765/57785 SDXC/MMC Card Reader [14e4:16bc] (rev 10)
04:00.2 System peripheral [0880]: Broadcom Limited BCM57765/57785 MS Card Reader [14e4:16be] (rev 10)
04:00.3 System peripheral [0880]: Broadcom Limited BCM57765/57785 xD-Picture Card Reader [14e4:16bf] (rev 10)

$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
1: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes
2: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
3: acer-bluetooth: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
4: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

I did rfkill unblock all. Same output. Take a look at this. Any ideas?

1: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes

Okay, hope I know how to do this. I'm still trying 2 figure out this editor.

$ sudo lsmod | grep wmi
acer_wmi               20480  0
sparse_keymap          16384  1 acer_wmi
wmi_bmof               16384  0
snd_rawmidi            32768  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_device         16384  3 snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_midi
snd                    81920  17 snd_hda_intel,snd_hwdep,snd_seq,snd_hda_codec,snd_timer,snd_rawmidi,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_pcm
mxm_wmi                16384  1 nouveau
wmi                    24576  4 wmi_bmof,acer_wmi,mxm_wmi,nouveau
video                  40960  3 acer_wmi,nouveau,i915

Thank you all very much for your prompt response. I apologize I have not been equally prompt. I tried Fn+F3, yes, when I first bought this laptop, I think it was Ubuntu 12.04 in those days, that was an issue, but not since. I just tried it tonight & it toggles to the airplane mode. Fn+F3 again goes to non-airplane mode.

As you can see from output below, hard blocked is yes even though I did an unblock all. I've also done a screen shot of wifi settings below. Hope it comes out okay.

$ sudo rfkill unblock all

$ sudo rfkill list all   
0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
1: acer-bluetooth: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
3: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes
5: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

ans 2 Leonard: no, this is a generation 2 system, intel i5 - 2410 to be precise. UEFI was not yet invented in those days. As you can c from the above output, it is a Broadcom wifi. Such systems are really challenging to get working.

thanks 4 the prompt response leonard & pilot6. I was thinking back at my installation since it was a long time ago, decided to reinstall, this time w/o the "install proprietary drivers" check box. It worked in the past, but this time not. Also, as I said, this system actually does not support UEFI, so there might not be any such thing as BIOS defaults; however, if I do not install as UEFI, boom! get this err message in the middle of installation.

So I installed with a UEFI partition & the installation goes through, but system does not detect wifi. I tried installing Kubuntu 18.04 on a different partition, same problem.

Anyone know what's being done here? I’m willing 2 give it a shot. At the moment, my system is still "crash & burn" so I can reinstall it multiple times, it's fine. The problem is, I’m not sure what he did. https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2386964

If it's a kernel upgrade, I did this before in 17.10, but on a different laptop. https://www.tecmint.com/upgrade-kernel-in-ubuntu/

I've got some new info here. I did as the Ubuntu Forums thread suggested & ran an inxi command. The output is below.

$ sudo inxi -Fnn
System:    Host: aspire4755g Kernel: 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64 bits: 64
           Console: tty 0 Distro: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Acer product: Aspire 4755 v: V2.07 serial: LXRNG020051310B9BA2000
           Mobo: Acer model: Aspire 4755 v: V2.07 serial: LXRNG020051310B9BA2000
           UEFI: Phoenix v: V2.07 date: 07/22/2011
Battery    BAT0: charge: 5.7 Wh 96.9% condition: 5.9/47.5 Wh (12%)
CPU:       Dual core Intel Core i5-2410M (-MT-MCP-) cache: 3072 KB
           clock speeds: max: 2300 MHz 1: 798 MHz 2: 798 MHz 3: 798 MHz
           4: 798 MHz
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Integrated Graphics Controller
           Card-2: NVIDIA GF108M [GeForce GT 540M]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.19.6 drivers: i915,nouveau
           Resolution: [email protected], [email protected]
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Sandybridge Mobile
           version: 3.3 Mesa 18.0.0-rc5
Audio:     Card Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Family High Def. Audio Controller
           driver: snd_hda_intel
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.15.0-20-generic
Network:   Card-1: Broadcom Limited BCM43227 802.11b/g/n driver: wl
           IF: wlp3s0 state: down mac: cc:af:78:73:68:e0
           Card-2: Broadcom Limited NetLink BCM57785 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
           driver: tg3
           IF: enp4s0f0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full
           mac: 20:6a:8a:50:73:0e
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (4.9% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: HGST_HTS545050A7 size: 500.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 36G used: 4.6G (14%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 20.48GB used: 0.00GB (0%)
           fs: swap dev: /dev/sda2
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 60.0C mobo: 53.0C gpu: 52.0
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 257 Uptime: 10 min Memory: 1291.5/7818.6MB
           Client: Shell (sudo) inxi: 2.3.56 

Solution 1

I found it! For certain types of hardware, even though they do not support UEFI, one can do a manual override when installing Ubuntu. No longer in 18.04. Many people have complained about it. One can "trick" the system into working by creating a UEFI partition even though the system does not support UEFI, but the wifi will not work after that. The way to fix it is follow this procedure:

1. delete ALL the partitions on the disk
2. create a new partition table.
3. create a new Ubuntu partition, I recommend using manual, create a separate swap & ext4 partition.
4. install Ubuntu on that. In my case, I installed KDE Neon, which is an Ubuntu 16.04 derivative.
5. install the wifi driver, in my case I used bcmwl-kernel-source because I have a Broadcom wifi, more information on Broadcom here
6. configure wifi as you normally would, information here
7. for KDE Neon, you must click on the "connect" button

Solution 2

I was running Ubuntu 18 with MATE desktop on an Acer ES14 and no way to enable wifi... (result of ~ sudo lshw -C network; lshw
*-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface )

I logged out of MATE and logged back in on the Ubuntu desktop.

• Wifi on the right top menu was off. I switched it on.
• Logged out logged back into MATE and wifi was Enabled.

Everything worked as it used to...

hope this helps.

Comments

[Hee Jin]

Hi Alvin, please use code block formatting when you're pasting input/output from Terminal--it makes it much easier to read

[chili555]

Please edit your question to add the result of the terminal command: lsmod | grep wmi Welcome to Ask Ubuntu.

[chili555]

Fn+F3 is the hotkey combination to enable and disable wireless. Does it change the hard block at all?

[Jack Tong]

by any chance are you using UEFI?

[Pilot6]

Try to reset BIOS to defaults.

[muru]

@IJervy you should get your accounts merged.