Realtek driver RTL8723BE not working in Ubuntu 16.04 (kernel 4.4)

Question

I upgraded from Ubuntu 15.10 (on which the driver had no issues whatsoever), to the LTS version 16.04 a day back. I knew I would have to reinstall the wifi driver for my card(Realtek RTL8723BE), and as before I compiled the code from https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new and installed it like always. But to no avail, because iwconfig shows me "no wireless extensions" and "modprobe"ing shows "error: required key missing". I think in the latest kernel ubuntu is looking for signed drivers? If that's the case then how should I go about it? I tried using different options while using modprobe as well (like ant_sel, ips etc) but still the same results. If that's not the case, then what should be the direction that I should start looking into?

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Solution

So, I figured out what the problem was. Since my machine runs on a UEFI BIOS with secured boot enabled, all the drivers that can be loaded onto the driver stack must be "signed". I think in kernel 4.4 Ubuntu, they enforced this sign verification quite strictly. That being said, all I did was to disable the secure boot from my BIOS setting (won't say this is a permanent solution) and now the wifi works like a charm.

Comments

[Pilot6]

Related askubuntu.com/questions/762254/…

[cat]

My machine doesn't have UEFI, yet I still have this issue. Any pointers?

[shivisuper]

@cat Did you go into your BIOS settings and look for secure boot option? It mainly has to do with the secure boot enabled and if it's enabled then any third party driver can't be loaded. Just try finding the secure boot option in your BIOS settings.

[cat]

My laptop shipped with Win 7; it has no notion of secure boot (which I appreciate). Thanks anyways :)

[Vasil Valchev]

OK explain how on 15 it was working, but on 16 i have to do something in my bios???

[shivisuper]

@VasilValchev it depends on what kernel your distro is using. From kernel 4.4 onwards, the driver stack must be signed and thus it creates some issues

[Vasil Valchev]

ok, so no working fix for this, just preinstalling driver work for couple of hours or day and then the problem occurs again :( Its so annoying to work professionally on laptop whit lan cable plugged in...