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On Ubuntu 14.04 32bit, after some up-time my wireless card stops working. Sometimes it helps to stop WiFi in the nm-applett (at the top right corner) and restart it to get a new connection to my WiFi, but mostly this doesn't help anymore - you have to reboot to use the card again.

I had this at several different locations so it was definitely a problem with my card.

The kernel at the moment:

$ uname -rp
3.14.1-031401-generic i686

My guess is that the wireless power save option that is set by powertop might cause some problems, so I added this to my /etc/rc.local so the end part looked like this:

# By default this script does nothing.

#####################################################
# tune all power save settings to >good<
powertop --auto-tune

once I disabled that option again, the wireless card seems to work better, but not all the time.

When in the crashed state and if I try to re-enable WiFi in the nm-applet I get this error in /var/log/syslog:

iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Failed to load firmware chunk!

I collected some data with the help of this answer: 

##### lspci #####

01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 [8086:08b2] (rev 6b)
  Subsystem: Intel Corporation Wireless-N 7260 [8086:c262]
  Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi

full results

If I look for locate 7260|grep -i wifi, I find the same module /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-7260-8.ucode. It doesn't use the latest drivers from wireless.kernel.org because the iwlwifi-7260-9.ucode is not supported yet.)

How can I fix this problem on my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro? Maybe it is possible to reload the kernel module somehow to re-enable it with a script if it died?

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rubo77
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3 Answers3

9

You need to disable the power management and possibly the 802.11n extension. These changes worked for me.

For the power management create a file in

sudo gedit /etc/pm/power.d/wireless

with the following content

#!/bin/sh 
/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 power off

and make it executable:

sudo chmod +x /etc/pm/power.d/wireless

To disable the 11n extension, try the following

sudo su
echo "options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1" >> /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf

You need to reboot after those changes. Running iwconfig should show:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11abg

and 

Power Management:off

What definitely worked for me was to upgrade to one of the latest kernel from 

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17-rc4-utopic/
Harris
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1

Please check for errors or clues in the log:

dmesg | grep iwl

It appears that the -8 firmware is loading. You may have better luck with the -9.

ls /lib/firmware | grep 7260

Hopefully, you will have:

iwlwifi-7260-7.ucode
iwlwifi-7260-8.ucode
iwlwifi-7260-9.ucode

If so, back up the -8 version:

sudo mv /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-7260-8.ucode  /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-7260-8.bak

Reboot and check for messages:

dmesg | grep iwl

Do you connect? Is it stable?

chili555
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1

None of the other solutions solved the problem, and recently, I found out, that this is a hardware problem:

When I carry around my laptop it usually shakes, and bends a bit, this is causing the faiure!

I can provoke the fail by bending the bottom of the screen a bit to the back on one side and pull to the front on the other side. not strong, just a tiny bit without hurting the device.

After some tries, the Wifi card dies.

The same problem on my gaming Windows partition.

So the solution is only to put the device in a safe place and don't change the angle of the screen, then the Wifi Card will stay active without problems.

Maybe it is caused by the Aux and Main connectors touching the case, when you bend it, the Wi-Fi card is located on the left side, just above the battery:

enter image description here

I tried to replyce the wifi card with this guide: http://techdadreview.com/2014/09/02/upgrade-lenovo-yoga-2-pros-wireless-card/

But I found out that the problem is not the WiFi card itself, but it is the long part of the motherboard next to it. Whenever you slightly press on that platine, the WiFi card dies.

So I will try to buy a small USB card now and meanwhile I will be cautious that I do not press too hard on the bottom of my laptop .

rubo77
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