Re: [SOLVED] Re: firmware-iwlwifi

[David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>]

On Mon 03 Oct 2022 at 09:25:15 (+0300), Georgi Naplatanov wrote:
> On 10/2/22 19:33, Charles Curley wrote:
> > On Sun, 2 Oct 2022 11:49:14 +0300
> > Georgi Naplatanov <gosho@oles.biz> wrote:
> > 
> > > I have a notebook (Lenovo) with Intel's WiFi and I have minor issues
> > > with it - sometimes works as expected but sometimes I cannot connect
> > > to the notebook at first attempt throw SSH or sometimes latency is
> > > high.
> > 
> > Which model Lenovo, and what is the exact wifi device? Please use lspci
> > to identify the device. For example, on my T520:
> 
> Actually I think I found out what was happening:
>   - for failed connection attempts trough SSH - the notebook sometimes
> switches to suspend/sleep mode and turns off its WiFi card and it
> takes time WiFi connection to become active again

I wake up my machines remotely, and then have to unlock (encrypted)
/home, so my unlock script is:

unlock-axis () 
{ 
    until ping -c 1 -W 1 axis | grep 'bytes from'; do
        printf '%s' "axis ";
    done;
    printf '%(%H:%M:%S)T\n' -1 && ssh -X axis -l unlock
}

This is related to my impatience rather than any system fault.

> These are the entries from kernel log:
> 
> [    3.453655] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: firmware: failed to load
> iwlwifi-QuZ-a0-hr-b0-72.ucode (-2)
> [    3.453695] firmware_class: See https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware
> for information about missing firmware
> [    3.454449] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: firmware: failed to load
> iwlwifi-QuZ-a0-hr-b0-72.ucode (-2)
> [    3.454488] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: Direct firmware load for
> iwlwifi-QuZ-a0-hr-b0-72.ucode failed with error -2

[ … counting down to … ]

> iwlwifi-QuZ-a0-hr-b0-64.ucode (-2)
> [    3.455902] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: firmware: failed to load
> iwlwifi-QuZ-a0-hr-b0-64.ucode (-2)
> [    3.458342] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: Direct firmware load for
> iwlwifi-QuZ-a0-hr-b0-64.ucode failed with error -2
> 
> I'm not sure that these messages correlate to my attempts to log in
> into the notebook through SSH. The messages appear always in kernel
> log.

So is this followed by an entry along the lines of:

  iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: firmware: direct-loading firmware iwlwifi-QuZ-a0-hr-b0-63.ucode

or does it say something like:

  iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: minimum version required: iwlwifi-QuZ-a0-hr-b0-64
  iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: maximum version supported: iwlwifi-QuZ-a0-hr-b0-72

The former would explain why your wifi is working, and
the latter would make it surprising that it still worked.

You normally only see this countdown in the debian-installer, before
the firmware package gets installed by check-missing-firmware.
What's out of the ordinary is that your hardware would prefer a more
up-to-date version (72) than what's in bookworm/sid.

Cheers,
David.