Intel 7265 installation

[silvio]

Hi,

i have a Dell E5450 with an Intel 7265 wireless nic inside.
My problem is, i can not use this device. I've installed the iwl-7265-firmware package but i have no chance to configure the device.

[root@bohr ~]# rpm -qa|grep iwl
iwl6000g2a-firmware-17.168.5.3-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl2030-firmware-18.168.6.1-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl3160-firmware-22.0.7.0-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl100-firmware-39.31.5.1-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl3945-firmware-15.32.2.9-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl6000g2b-firmware-17.168.5.2-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl6050-firmware-41.28.5.1-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl6000-firmware-9.221.4.1-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl1000-firmware-39.31.5.1-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl2000-firmware-18.168.6.1-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl4965-firmware-228.61.2.24-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl135-firmware-18.168.6.1-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl7265-firmware-22.0.7.0-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl5150-firmware-8.24.2.2-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl7260-firmware-22.0.7.0-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl5000-firmware-8.83.5.1_1-35.el7_0.noarch
iwl105-firmware-18.168.6.1-35.el7_0.noarch

In the firmware directory i have 2 firmware files for the device,

[root@bohr firmware]# ls -la iwlwifi-7265*
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 690452 22. Sep 16:07 iwlwifi-7265-8.ucode
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 691960 22. Sep 16:07 iwlwifi-7265-9.ucode:

but the iwlwifi module does not load them

[root@bohr ~]# modinfo iwlwifi
filename: /lib/modules/3.10.0-123.13.2.el7.x86_64/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi.ko
license: GPL
author: Copyright(c) 2003-2013 Intel Corporation <ilw@linux.intel.com>
version: in-tree:
description: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi driver for Linux
firmware: iwlwifi-100-5.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-1000-5.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-135-6.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-105-6.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-2030-6.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-2000-6.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-5150-2.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-5000-5.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-6000g2b-6.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-6000g2a-5.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-6050-5.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-6000-4.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-3160-7.ucode
firmware: iwlwifi-7260-7.ucode
srcversion: 757D180A01FD3512D62BB74

The first question for me is, why does the module only loads the "old" files. I have files with higher version numbers in the firmware directories for some of the devices?
Here is the output from lshw for the device.

[root@bohr ~]# lshw

*-network UNCLAIMED
description: Network controller
product: Wireless 7265
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
version: 48
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: memory:f7c00000-f7c01fff

and lspci:

[root@bohr ~]# lspci
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7265 (rev 48)

Kernel:
[root@bohr firmware]# uname -a
Linux bohr.localdomain 3.10.0-123.13.2.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Dec 18 14:09:13 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Have anyone an idea what i can do? I have tested the system with an Fedora21 live system and it it works with the same firmware files and numbers.

Thanks

Silvio

[NedSlider]

To answer your first question, Intel's wireless drivers require specific firmware revisions, and newer firmwares are not always compatible with older driver revisions. Red Hat tend to ship all firmware versions and the kernel driver will load the correct version.

Your device is not detected because as far as I can tell support for the 7265 chipset was added in kernel 3.14 and EL7 uses 3.10. What kernel was your Fedora system running that supported this chipset?

Red Hat do update the Intel iwlwifi driver quite often so I would file an RFE with Red Hat. Unless they are already planning it, it's unlikely to make 7.1 but it might get supported in 7.2 or 7.3.

For immediate support you are going to have to run a newer kernel. Perhaps check out kernel-ml from ELRepo:

http://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-ml

[silvio]

Thanks for the answer.
Fedora has 3.17 running, so i will wait for a new release and test if it works.


Silvio

[voor]

Hi,

I had the same problem with my CentOS 7 installation. For my solution see here:

http://superuser.com/q/889295/427841

Visit: https://backports.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page They have a temporary download page, so I don't want to link directly to that in this question since I imagine it'll eventually go away. Download that releaase:

tar xf backports-3.19-rc1-1.tar.xz
cd backports-3.19-rc1-1
make defconfig-iwlwifi
sudo make install

I rebooted, and everything seems to be working. No need to update to kernel-ml.

Essentially, there's a tarball you can download that will provide backwards compatibility for old kernels.

[NedSlider]

Please can you post the following information for the device:

lspci -nn

The wireless drivers have been updated in CentOS 7.1 and you can update from the CR repository here:

http://mirrors.coreix.net/centos/7/cr/x86_64/Packages/

There is a very good chance your device will be supported and I should be able to confirm this with the above requested information

[calev]

Please can you post the following information for the device:

lspci -nn

The wireless drivers have been updated in CentOS 7.1 and you can update from the CR repository here:

http://mirrors.coreix.net/centos/7/cr/x86_64/Packages/

There is a very good chance your device will be supported and I should be able to confirm this with the above requested information

I'm not using the same laptop as the OP but would like to add a data point since my new machine has the same Intel NIC. After installing CentOS 7 and updating everything with CR repo, the Intel 7265 wireless NIC still does not work. Unless there are some additional steps required apart from simply doing the yum update, 7.1 doesn't appear to have added support for this.

[calev]

My bad for making noob mistakes. I'd assumed that doing yum update will update the existing iwl7265 driver in the system but this was not the case. Issuing the specific command to update iwl7265-firmware from CR and followed by a reboot was all that was needed to get the Intel 7265 wireless adapter working.

[NedSlider]

Thanks for confirming the driver works in 7.1

Yes, the new iwl7265-firmware package needs to be manually installed. It's a new package in 7.1 so won't be present simply by performing an update from 7.0

Checking /var/log/messages should have given you some clues - you should see the driver looking for it's firmware and should log the path/filename of the missing firmware file when it is unable to find/load it.