No wifi after upgrading Vanilla dpup. (Solved)

[Airdale]

I'm running Vanilla dpup as a frugal install on an old Dell Latitude laptop. Typically I have to install the proprietary Broadcom drivers for the wifi to work.

I'm currently running the 10.x series (not xwayland). I installed broadcom-sta-dkms a long time ago, and wifi has always worked well without a hitch.

I just upgraded to 10.0.52 from 10.0.48 (I know.... I missed a few in between ). However, after the upgrade.... no wifi.

Rolled back to 10.0.48.... works fine. Back to 10.0.52.... nothing.

I plugged a usb wifi dongle in that doesn't need the Broadcom drivers, and was up and running in no time.

I tried to reinstall broadcom-sta-dkms via Synaptic and see if that would make any difference..... but no, still couldn't use the built in wifi.

I haven't tried a fresh install with a new savefile yet... but that's my next step.

[dimkr]

@Airdale Please share the output of

Code: Select all

uname -r
find /usr/lib/modules | grep dkms 
/usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller

[Airdale]

@Airdale Please share the output of

Code: Select all

uname -r
find /usr/lib/modules | grep dkms 
/usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller

Code: Select all

~$ uname -r
6.1.85
~$ find /usr/lib/modules | grep dkms
/usr/lib/modules/6.1.85/updates/dkms
/usr/lib/modules/6.1.85/updates/dkms/wl.ko
~$ /usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller
Usage: /usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller {start}

[dimkr]

@Airdale My bad, it should have been /usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller start.

I see the driver is installed, let's see if it's loaded and no firmware is missing:

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller start
dmesg -c > /dev/null
modprobe wl
dmesg

[Airdale]

@Airdale My bad, it should have been /usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller start.

I see the driver is installed, let's see if it's loaded and no firmware is missing:

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller start
dmesg -c > /dev/null
modprobe wl
dmesg

No problem!!!

Code: Select all

~$ /usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller start
dkms: running auto installation service for kernel 6.1.85
dkms: autoinstall for kernel 6.1.85 Done. 
~$ dmesg -c > /dev/null
~$ modprobe wl
~$ dmesg

dmsg with no output at all

Thank you so much for your help!!

[dimkr]

dmsg with no output at all

That's good, this probably means that the driver is both installed and loaded. Can you reboot and share dmesg output?

Also, you might want to check rfkill, maybe WiFi is blocked through software (shouldn't be) or hardware (most laptops have a key combination for this).

[Airdale]

dmsg with no output at all

That's good, this probably means that the driver is both installed and loaded. Can you reboot and share dmesg output?

Also, you might want to check rfkill, maybe WiFi is blocked through software (shouldn't be) or hardware (most laptops have a key combination for this).

Well.... now I feel like an idiot. rfkill showed a hard block. I checked and the wifi switch was indeed off. Switched it on.... problem solved.

I'm not sure how that could have happened.... like I said - when I rolled back to 10.0.48 it started working again and when I upgraded to 10.0.52 it stopped working again. It was repeatable.....

But however it happened - it was the switch and all is good now.

Sorry to take up your time with this! And thanks very much for all your help!!!

[dimkr]

Don't feel too bad about this, I have a laptop where hard block is sometimes enabled randomly after reboot, especially if the battery is drained.