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I can't connect to WiFi from my notebook. It was working fine for a long time until recently.
There have been updates to linux-firmware.

I didn't notice it right away because I usually have my notebook connected by Ethernet - which works fine.

It seems like something is wrong at the notebook end. How do I rule out a hardware failure?

Details:

Analyser script output

I finally remembered to looked in dmesg and found that

It was trying to load iwlwifi-7265D-19.ucode or iwlwifi-7265D-18.ucode, but I only have
10,12,13,16,17,21,22,27,29

So I tried (as a stopgap measure)

sudo ln -sf iwlwifi-7265D-17.ucode iwlwifi-7265D-19.ucode

which got rid of the error:

bigbird@sananda:/lib/firmware$ dmesg -T | grep wifi

[Sun Feb 18 01:48:52 2018] iwlwifi 0000:07:00.0: loaded firmware version 17.352738.0 op_mode iwlmvm

[Sun Feb 18 01:48:53 2018] iwlwifi 0000:07:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 7265, REV=0x210

[Sun Feb 18 01:48:53 2018] iwlwifi 0000:07:00.0: L1 Enabled - LTR Enabled

[Sun Feb 18 01:48:53 2018] iwlwifi 0000:07:00.0: L1 Enabled - LTR Enabled

[Sun Feb 18 01:48:53 2018] iwlwifi 0000:07:00.0 wlp7s0: renamed from wlan0

bigbird@sananda:/lib/firmware$

But didn't fix the problem.

bigbird@sananda:/lib/firmware$ rfkill unblock wifi

bigbird@sananda:/lib/firmware$ rfkill unblock wlan

bigbird@sananda:/lib/firmware$ rfkill list

0: Toshiba Bluetooth: Bluetooth

        Soft blocked: no

        Hard blocked: no

1: hci0: Bluetooth

        Soft blocked: no

        Hard blocked: no

2: phy0: Wireless LAN

        Soft blocked: no

        Hard blocked: yes

bigbird@sananda:/lib/firmware$

I found this, but don't really understand it:

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/iwlwifi/core_release

There are a whole lot of "end of life" notices there, but this notebook is only a few years old.

Hardware:

Toshiba Satellite S55 C5274

kubuntu 16.04

Technicolor Gateway TC8717 (BATC8717T V4)

My smartphone can access the WiFi fine, so it's up.

I can access my gateway via Ethernet cable and it looks fine.

Running

rfkill unblock wifi

or wlan, with or without sudo only affects the soft block.

The wifi toggle on my keyboard turns the soft block on and off, but leaves the hard block in place.

I do not have a firewall running on my notebook and I just have one totally external IP blocked using iptables.

sudo lshw

shows:

        *-pci:1

             description: PCI bridge

             product: Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #3

             vendor: Intel Corporation

             physical id: 1c.2

             bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.2

             version: e3

             width: 32 bits

             clock: 33MHz

             capabilities: pci normal_decode bus_master cap_list

             configuration: driver=pcieport

             resources: irq:43 memory:b3300000-b33fffff

           *-network DISABLED

                description: Wireless interface

                product: Wireless 7265

                vendor: Intel Corporation

                physical id: 0

                bus info: pci@0000:07:00.0

                logical name: wlp7s0

                version: 61

                serial: dc:53:60:cb:27:17

                width: 64 bits

                clock: 33MHz

                capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless

                configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=4.4.0-112-generic firmware=17.352738.0 latency=0 link=no mu$

                resources: irq:53 memory:b3300000-b3301fff



bigbird@sananda:~/bin$ sudo ip -a link



1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1

    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00

2: enp8s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000

    link/ether 54:ab:3a:0d:4f:a4 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

3: wlp7s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000

    link/ether dc:53:60:cb:27:17 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

bigbird@sananda:~/bin$

Finally got WiFi to work - using an external adapter! Only took eleven months.

First, I tried a Penguin PAU06 adapter, but even with their support, I couldn't get it to work.

I just bought another WiFi adapter from ThinkPenguin and at first, that didn't work either. But they had instructions on how to disable the internal WiFi card (inside the notebook) and that's what made the ThinkPenguin adapter work. It also made the Panda work.

The trick is:

Find its ID (I'm not sure what type of ID it is. I think it's a hardware device ID):

bigbird@sananda:~$ realpath /sys/class/ieee80211/phy0 | cut -f 6 -d '/'

0000:07:00.0

And then create a udev rule that disables it and put it in /etc/udev/rules.d/81-wireless-pci.rules:

ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="0000:07:00.0", SUBSYSTEM=="pci", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:07:00.0/remove'"

Note that the ID gets inserted in two places in the above command. The actual ID will probably be different on other systems.

I'm not sure if it was necessary, but I rebooted after adding the above file.

Since finding USB WiFi adapters that work on Linux is apparently worse than getting video cards to work, here are the two models that now work on my system:

Panda PAU06 - N300

ThinkPenguin TPE-N150USB - N150