Wifi not working even under Kernel 3.19.0-64 - need help on reinstalling drivers for Intel 8260

Hi I am running exactly the intel8260 drivers with a ubuntu 14.04LTS so it is really strange?

Did you experienced a decrease in battery life in addition to rhese problems?

Hi I am running exactly the intel8260 drivers with a ubuntu 14.04LTS so it is really strange? Did you experienced a decrease in battery life in addition to rhese problems?

I did not because I'm still waiting for a response from Dell or someone else who could help me to get my wifi up and running again. But currently I wouldn't wonder if something else is broken because everything seems so fragile right now. What was your battery time before and how long does it last currently (given a comparable use of applications etc.)?

In my System Settings > Software & Updates > Additional Drivers, I can see that the selected driver is the Intel8260 that does not say "btusb".  (I have never tried to change anything in there so I assume my settings are 'correct'.)

Since you disabled your Secure Boot, have you tried 3.19.0-65 again?

Do you want someone else to run the wireless-info script for comparison?

I suppose the "Additional Drivers" screen & user interface is specific to Ubuntu.  So you could try asking on an Ubuntu-specific site like askubuntu.com with a question about the implications of these symptoms: "hit apply the dialogue is grayed-out and falls back to the "Do not use this device" option some moments later"

In my System Settings > Software & Updates > Additional Drivers, I can see that the selected driver is the Intel8260 that does not say "btusb".  (I have never tried to change anything in there so I assume my settings are 'correct'.)

Thanks for the info, it's important to know the default setting.

Since you disabled your Secure Boot, have you tried 3.19.0-65 again?

Yeah, the wireless-info output was actually made running Ubuntu 14.04 with the 3.19.0-65 kernel. The reason is that I did have the same problem under the previous kernel version, too.

Do you want someone else to run the wireless-info script for comparison?

Yes, please! If you or someone else has (updated) factory Ubuntu 14.04 running, it would be great to compare the wireless-info outputs. In case this shows differences in the lsmod section (e.g., iwlwifi), this could already explain why my wifi is gone. The wireless-info script is from the Ubuntu forums and available on github.

@Open4D

Thanks a lot for the wireless-info output of your XPS13DE! The summary is:

iwlmvm                335872  0 mac80211              643072  1 iwlmvm iwlwifi               200704  1 iwlmvm cfg80211              548864  3 iwlwifi,mac80211,iwlmvm compat                 28672  8 bnep,cfg80211,iwlwifi,btusb,mac80211,iwlmvm,rfcomm,bluetooth

That means, several wifi modules haven't been loaded and ATM I don't know why. Given it is possible to manually load these kernel modules, would I do that with modprobe and how would the commands look like (order of loading relevant?)? In the best case these can be dynamically loaded and my wifi is working again. In another possible case, I will get a proper error message telling me, why the modules cannot be loaded, thus indicating why they can't be loaded after reboot in the first place.

You're welcome.

I have no idea about the answer to your questions, but hopefully someone else will ...

I can understand your irritation at not getting answers from Dell.  I have not had any answer to my "Does Project Sputnik have any official / semi-official guidance for carrying out an upgrade to a supported OS?" question (asked here and here).

But personally I am tempted to 'cut some slack' for Project Sputnik.  I guess most Dell employees prefer the idea of a Microsoft monopoly.  And the small number of Linux aficionados in Dell may have an uphill struggle.  (There’s a section within this blog post with the Project Sputnik history which I found interesting.)

If you insist on getting an official solution, have you tried the official Dell Support instead of the community forum?  In the UK it seems (as I posted here) that there is a phone number to use.  Perhaps there is an equivalent in your country?

Otherwise you might find the broader Ubuntu community willing to help.

• askubuntu.com
• ubuntuforums.org

Or maybe you could try upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and see if the wifi works then?  This idea brings us back to my aforementioned "carrying out an upgrade to a supported OS" question again, because I think that Ubuntu support for the 3.19 Linux kernel might be finishing in as little as 3 days' time, and if I am right then arguably there is little point you spending any effort getting wifi working on 3.19.  So perhaps you might as well try 16.04 with the 4.4 Linux kernel and see what happens.

But how can you do the upgrade when your wifi is broken?  Well, it seems that in the past it has been possible to use an Ubuntu CD / USB image to do the upgrade.  (e.g. the top answer to this question has a section called "Upgrading by using the CD or USB image").

I don't know if that is still possible.  If not, perhaps you can buy or borrow a USB-Ethernet adaptor?  Or use the laptop's Bluetooth to connect to a smartphone and access the Internet that way?

But personally I am tempted to 'cut some slack' for Project Sputnik.  I guess most Dell employees prefer the idea of a Microsoft monopoly.  And the small number of Linux aficionados in Dell may have an uphill struggle.  (There’s a section within this blog post with the Project Sputnik history which I found interesting.)

Indeed, and I'm inclined to feel the same. I know that Barton and his team are not the ones to blame. From my humble view, I think it is rather the DELL management who is not giving enough resources to that project (including funding for more support staff), although the XPS13 is a success story and Linux-compatible ultrabooks are desperately wanted by devs around the world. I still don't get it: why is it such a huge problem to curate an XPS13 specific wiki (might also cover other models) which addresses the common pitfalls and presents tested solutions/workarounds? Of course, this wiki should be maintained by a DELL employee as well as constantly updated. That person could get into contact to members from the Sputnik team and/or Canonical and get first hand information at a time when we, the customers, are still guessing.

If you insist on getting an official solution, have you tried the official Dell Support instead of the community forum?  In the UK it seems (as I posted here) that there is a phone number to use.  Perhaps there is an equivalent in your country?

Well, I contacted them via e-mail (in Germany) more than a week ago and the guy basically told me that there won't be software support. He gave me a link to a document where all this is written down. He continued by saying that I should go to the DELL forums (which I did by posting here) or ask at ubuntuusers or askubuntu. But there was no specific answer to my question whether or not DELL has .deb files/drivers which could help me to reinstall my wifi.

Or maybe you could try upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and see if the wifi works then?  This idea brings us back to my aforementioned "carrying out an upgrade to a supported OS" question again, because I think that Ubuntu support for the 3.19 Linux kernel might be finishing in as little as 3 days' time, and if I am right then arguably there is little point you spending any effort getting wifi working on 3.19.  So perhaps you might as well try 16.04 with the 4.4 Linux kernel and see what happens.

I wrote this in one of my recent posts: when I boot into 16.04 via LIVE-USB (choose "Try Ubuntu" in GRUB), everything works fine which clearly shows that only my wifi driver is messed-up but that there is no hardware problem. However, I refused to do a clean install of whatever OS because I already synced GBs of cloud data and I do not want to do it again. In my view, it must be possible to reinstall the wifi drivers to the exact same state of the factory install.

But how can you do the upgrade when your wifi is broken?  Well, it seems that in the past it has been possible to use an Ubuntu CD / USB image to do the upgrade.  (e.g. the top answer to this question has a section called "Upgrading by using the CD or USB image").

I can download .deb files from another machine and transfer them to my XPS via pen drive. Then I could run "dpkg -i foo.deb" to install a certain package

I still don't get it: why is it such a huge problem to curate an XPS13 specific wiki (might also cover other models) which addresses the common pitfalls and presents tested solutions/workarounds? Of course, this wiki should be maintained by a DELL employee as well as constantly updated. That person could get into contact to members from the Sputnik team and/or Canonical and get first hand information at a time when we, the customers, are still guessing.

Agreed.  I have only been using this Project Sputnik forum for less than 2 weeks, and already I am convinced it needs to be supplemented by a Project Sputnik wiki.  Even if the Dell employees only wrote as much on that wiki as they do here on the forum, that would be worthwhile.  The users would add more info themselves.  It could use the MediaWiki FlaggedRevs feature (or an equivalent) to protect certain pages that Dell considers to be 'official'.

          .

Open4D Or maybe you could try upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and see if the wifi works then?  This idea brings us back to my aforementioned "carrying out an upgrade to a supported OS" question again, because I think that Ubuntu support for the 3.19 Linux kernel might be finishing in as little as 3 days' time, and if I am right then arguably there is little point you spending any effort getting wifi working on 3.19.  So perhaps you might as well try 16.04 with the 4.4 Linux kernel and see what happens. I wrote this in one of my recent posts: when I boot into 16.04 via LIVE-USB (choose "Try Ubuntu" in GRUB), everything works fine which clearly shows that only my wifi driver is messed-up but that there is no hardware problem. However, I refused to do a clean install of whatever OS because I already synced GBs of cloud data and I do not want to do it again. In my view, it must be possible to reinstall the wifi drivers to the exact same state of the factory install.

I wasn't thinking of a clean install.  Wouldn't it be possible just to do an upgrade, without losing your cloud data, nor anything else (in theory)?

(And as I say, you might not have any choice about doing some kind of update - unless you are willing to stay on an OS that I think Ubuntu will no longer support as of next month.)