Intel Wireless 7260 often crashes

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Dell xps 9333, same problem.

Did this issue start happening after an update/upgrade? Was there a prior kernel version where you were not having this particular problem?

Would it be possible for you to test the latest upstream kernel? Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Please test the latest v4.11 kernel[0].

If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tag 'kernel-fixed-upstream'.

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the tag: 'kernel-bug-exists-upstream'.

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug as "Confirmed".

Thanks in advance.

[0] http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.11-rc7

Some additional notes after testing for a while...

The crashing behavior doesn't occur consistently in the same way. Sometimes the Bluetooth crashes with the Wifi, while sometimes it recovers fine and continues to work while the Wifi doesn't. In addition, it seems that the Wifi crash breaks NetworkManager as well- when I try to plug in a USB WiFi card, the networks show up but give me the following error in dmesg whenever the usb adapter tries to connect:

[21857.875157] wlx002129e30688: authenticate with 8e:15:44:a9:86:22
[21857.924545] wlx002129e30688: send auth to 8e:15:44:a9:86:22 (try 1/3)
[21857.926882] wlx002129e30688: authenticated
[21863.316129] wlx002129e30688: authenticate with 8e:15:44:a9:85:f8
[21863.371861] wlx002129e30688: send auth to 8e:15:44:a9:85:f8 (try 1/3)
[21863.374438] wlx002129e30688: authenticated
[21868.376165] wlx002129e30688: aborting authentication with 8e:15:44:a9:85:f8 by local choice (Reason: 3=DEAUTH_LEAVING)
[21868.740813] wlx002129e30688: authenticate with 8e:15:44:a9:82:fa
[21868.788615] wlx002129e30688: send auth to 8e:15:44:a9:82:fa (try 1/3)
[21868.790444] wlx002129e30688: authenticated
[21873.795552] wlx002129e30688: aborting authentication with 8e:15:44:a9:82:fa by local choice (Reason: 3=DEAUTH_LEAVING)

This repeats until it gives up trying to connect. Yet, tethering to my Android phone over USB DOES usually work. Restarting the NetworkManager service has no effect on the wifi issue.

@jsalisbury: This issue has persisted across kernel versions and Ubuntu versions. I had the same issue on 16.10, as well as Arch when I used it, upgrade or not. I'm not ruling out a regression however, but frankly I have no qualifications to say what the issue is caused by. If I have time (and I get desperate enough) I'll try 16.04 and 14.04 and let you know if it's still present there.

I'll test the 4.11 kernel this weekend, in the meantime, I'll upload some more dmesg outputs.

It took less than 10 minutes of testing for the issue to come back up again under 4.11-rc7. Definitely NOT fixed upstream. I'll keep testing and see if I find any other unique behaviours/error messages. Thanks again, let me know if there's anything I can do!

Issue definitely persists on 4.11/upstream. I came across an interesting output in dmesg which may explain why bluetooth works while the WiFi doesn't:

[17326.525545] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Could not load the [0] uCode section
[17326.525697] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Failed to start INIT ucode: -5
[17326.525702] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Failed to run INIT ucode: -5
[17326.525705] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Failed to start RT ucode: -5
[17391.638774] usb 1-4: USB disconnect, device number 64
[17392.015275] usb 1-4: new full-speed USB device number 65 using xhci_hcd
[17392.156505] usb 1-4: New USB device found, idVendor=8087, idProduct=07dc
[17392.156520] usb 1-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
[17392.179288] Bluetooth: hci0: read Intel version: 3707100180012d0d00
[17392.179426] Bluetooth: hci0: Intel Bluetooth firmware file: intel/ibt-hw-37.7.10-fw-1.80.1.2d.d.bseq
[17392.367199] Bluetooth: hci0: Intel Bluetooth firmware patch completed and activated

What's interesting is that iwlwifi "can't load" the uCode/firmware, causing the internet/wifi portion to fail, but Bluetooth uses a separate firmware file on the same card, which itself works fine. So this probably explains why the bluetooth still works.

There's a new 7260 firmware, can you try it?

1. Download https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/plain/iwlwifi-7260-17.ucode

2. Put 'iwlwifi-7260-17.ucode' to /lib/firmware

3. Reboot.

Zesty already has the latest 7260 firmware (revision 459231), and according to the attached CurrentDmesg.txt that's what being using:

[ 8.000329] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: loaded firmware version 17.459231.0 op_mode iwlmvm

Seth, you are right, I didn't check it careful enough.

Ben, you probably need to file an upstream bug report.

You can also iwlwifi-core [1] as a last resort. It has some non-upstreamed fixes.

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

Just a few updates which may be of use to anyone else having the same issues...

1). As this issue persists without a truly good solution, it may be a good idea to simply replace the wifi card with, say, an Atheros one which works better. You can find them relatively cheaply on ebay.

2). One of the major issues that I was having was that my main Wifi would crash internally, then whenever I tried to plug in a USB Wifi adapter they wouldn't work either, leaving me literally without any method of getting (wireless) internet. I assumed these two issues were connected, however, further research has led me to believe otherwise.

I tried entirely removing the internal wifi card to see if that would make a difference on the USB wifi cards, yet still neither of mine worked. Further looking revealed one or two strange oddities...

phy#1
 Interface wlx000f6001cb1f
  ifindex 3
  wdev 0x100000001
  addr 00:0f:60:01:cb:1f
  type managed
  txpower 20.00 dBm

The interface is WAY out of convention. As explained here (https://superuser.com/questions/1086632/wlan1-showing-as-weird-characters#1086705), interface names are limited to 16 bytes. My theory is that when network-manager tries to connect with this interface, it breaks that limit. The solution suggested in that thread works, append net.ifnames=0 to the kernel parameters in grub and suddenly all of my USB wifi adapters work fantastically.

I have a feeling this itself may warrant a separate bug report, I'll do some looking and see if anyone else is having the same issue/if someone's already reported it.

TL;DR: If your USB wifi doesn't work and you get weird/long interface names from "iw dev", use "net.ifnames=0" to fix the interface name and take back your wifi.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

This one looks like the same bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-firmware/+bug/1673344