I have a Dell XPS 13" (2015) with an Intel 7265 WiFi card. I use Slackware64-current.

This worked fine until about March 12th. I can't remember what (if anything) I did...

At the time I thought the hardware had simply broken - or a contact come loose. So, I just abandoned the laptop in disgust :-(

Months later, I tried booting into Arch Linux and, yes, the hardware is fine. So I tried tracking the problem down...

Around the time things went wrong calls to /sbin/iwconfig appeared in /var/log/messages.

Mar 12 02:38:29 xps root: /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1: /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 nick xps
Mar 12 02:38:29 xps root: /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1: /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 essid "squishynet"
Mar 12 02:38:29 xps root: /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1: wpa_supplicant -B -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dwext -iwlan0

Then it looked like some script in /etc/rc.d/ that I didn't recognise had become executable. I can't remember its name, and it doesn't seem to be there anymore, because ...

... after I chmod -x'd it, WLAN worked again! Hooray :-)

So then I decided to cave in and let slackpkg do whatever it wanted (I hadn't been keen on pulse audio).

After a slackpkg update/upgrade...

... WLAN stopped working again. :-(

Now I'm suspecting that old firmware is getting loaded!?


I've egrep'd anything WiFi related from that messages log (see attachment). Ie from before the trouble started through the temporary fix, back to (different?) problems.



I'm sorry this is so muddled. I'm a beginner at Slackware. I'm also getting forgetful and disorganised. Might be the meds... :-(


rc.wireless and rc.networkmanager are not executable. rc.inet1 is executable.



/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf:

GATEWAY=""
DEBUG_ETH_UP="yes"

IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
IPADDR[4]=""
NETMASK[4]=""
USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
WLAN_ESSID[4]=squishynet
WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"


/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=root
fast_reauth=1

network={
scan_ssid=0
ssid="squishynet"
psk=<longhexkey>
}

Attached Files

messages.log (89.0 KB, 5 views)

Oh dear.

I just noticed that

/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf:

# Slackware 14.1 - x86_64
#MIRRORPLUS['multilib']=http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/multilib/14.1/
MIRRORPLUS['alienbob']=http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/sbrepos/14.1/x86_64/
MIRRORPLUS['restricted']=http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/restricted_sbrepos/14.1/x86_64/
MIRRORPLUS['slacky']=http://repository.slacky.eu/slackware64-14.1/

# use this to keep the slackpkg+ package updated
MIRRORPLUS['slackpkgplus']=http://slakfinder.org/slackpkg+/

# Slackware current - x86_64
#MIRRORPLUS['multilib']=http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/multilib/current/



/etc/slackpkg/mirrors:

only has uncommented:

http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/slackwa...are64-current/

It is very possible that you installing 14.1 packages on a -current system could break things. I would try swapping those repos to current and rerun slackpkg, but the damage may have already been done. It might be worth reinstalling all Slackware packages using slackpkg.

I'm pretty sure that's what happened. I've done a completely new install of slackware64-14.2.

The problem with iwlwifi is still there though.

dmesg says:

iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-19.ucode failed with error -2
iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-18.ucode failed with error -2
iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-17.ucode failed with error -2
iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: loaded firmware version 16.242414.0 op_mode iwlmvm

/lib/firmware/ contains the files:

iwlwifi-7265D-10.ucode
iwlwifi-7265D-12.ucode
iwlwifi-7265D-13.ucode
iwlwifi-7265D-16.ucode
iwlwifi-7265D-21.ucode <------ NB !!!

/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwl-7000.c contains the lines:

/* Highest firmware API version supported */
#define IWL7260_UCODE_API_MAX 17
#define IWL7265_UCODE_API_MAX 19
#define IWL7265D_UCODE_API_MAX 19 <------ NB 19 not 21

So, I guess that might be the problem.

Any ideas what I should do about it?

Oddly enough, this used to work with the slackware64-current version from around the beginning of the year (see the /var/log/messages file attached to the first post).

Another "oh dear: :-(

Just looked at https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/...rivers/iwlwifi

That seems to say that the latest driver version for 4.3 kernels is indeed 16.242414.0. Whilst the latest for 4.1 kernels is 25.30.13.0

Ok, the problem was having rc.wireless non-executable. I misread AlienBob's http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/...ckware:network.

I thought rc.wireless was deprecated. What's deprecated is putting the WLAN settings in rc.wireless.conf instead of rc.inet1.conf.

Duh.