Kernel 4.15.0-30 broke Wifi on my Surface pro 3

[carlosroque]

Hi, I am not sure if this is the correct place for this.

After receiving the latest round of updates kernel gets updated to 0-30 from 0-29 I immediately noticed inconsistent connections and after a few minutes the wifi adapter just stops working. A reboot will fix the issue but just momentarily.

I had to revert back to 4.15.0-29 to get the wifi working.

has anyone experienced this problem with the 0-30 kernel?

[jglen490]

Nope, still works here.

[kc1di]

have no problem with mine , but it could be several things do you know which wireless card is in that machine?
post the output of sudo lshw -C network

[carlosroque]

I thought the problem was gone but i came back again today. i will look at what other pacakges got updated recently
here is the output of that command
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: 88W8897 [AVASTAR] 802.11ac Wireless
vendor: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
logical name: wlp1s0
version: 00
serial: 3xxxxxxxxx
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=mwifiex_pcie ip=192.168.2.81 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:59 memory:c0500000-c05fffff memory:c0400000-c04fffff

[carlosroque]

Kubuntu has been super stable, i recently moved away from regular ubuntu due to bad wifi plus other annoyances. these are the packages that got installed right before the problems started. do you see any that would be related to wifi?
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libgtkmm-2.4-1v5:amd64
/var/lib/dpkg/info/atom
/var/lib/dpkg/info/gparted
/var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-modules-4.15.0-24-generic
/var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-image-4.15.0-24-generic
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libatkmm-1.6-1v5:amd64
/var/lib/dpkg/info/xserver-xorg-input-all
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libglibmm-2.4-1v5:amd64
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libpangomm-1.4-1v5:amd64
/var/lib/dpkg/info/google-chrome-stable
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libcairomm-1.0-1v5:amd64
/var/lib/dpkg/info/xserver-xorg
/var/lib/dpkg/info/xorg
/var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-headers-4.15.0-30-generic
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libsigc++-2.0-0v5:amd64
/var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-modules-extra-4.15.0-24-generic
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libtomcrypt1:amd64
/var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-modules-4.15.0-30-generic
/var/lib/dpkg/info/xserver-xorg-video-all
/var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-libc-dev:amd64
/var/lib/dpkg/info/x11-common
/var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-headers-generic
/var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-headers-4.15.0-30

I did sudo apt-get purge linux-image-4.15.0-30-generic
thinking that was enough to revert back

thanks for your help

[jglen490]

Did you install the driver for the wifi card, or was it present after installing Kubuntu?

Updating the kernel could be a contributor the problem.

Would you run

inxi -n

and post the results. If it's not on your machine, just enter

sudo apt install inxi

.

[Mister Pi]

I'm having similar problems on my HP-Envy. My wireless has never been rock solid, but it's gotten bad in the past day or two (about the time of the 0-30 upgrade). Basically, suspend-to-RAM has a good chance of killing the wireless on wakeup. No, it's not my router -- the Notification popup doesn't show ANY of the dozen or so wifi's in my neighborhood. Sometimes I have to play around for 5 minutes repeatedly suspending and waking up, turning airplane mode on and off. etc., before it gets back to normal. (Note that wifi stays on as long as I don't suspend-to-RAM.)

"inxi -n" returns

Network: Card-1: Intel Wireless 7265 driver: iwlwifi
IF: wlp1s0 state: up mac: 60:f6:77:7e:30:1a
...

while "sudo lshw -C network" returns:

*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Wireless 7265
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
logical name: wlp1s0
version: 59
serial: 60:f6:77:7e:30:1a
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=4.15.0-30-generic firmware=29.1044073957.0 ip=192.168.1.5 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:132 memory:b4200000-b4201fff
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
...

[carlosroque]

Did you install the driver for the wifi card, or was it present after installing Kubuntu?

Updating the kernel could be a contributor the problem.

Would you run

inxi -n

and post the results. If it's not on your machine, just enter

sudo apt install inxi

.

Network: Card: Marvell 88W8897 [AVASTAR] 802.11ac Wireless driver: mwifiex_pcie
IF: wlp1s0 state: up mac: 30:59xxxxxx

So i am not sure if this is related but I noticed that this problem could also have been related or affecting my wireless router
- a few days ago there was a power flicker and the router went crazy had to be reset
- around that time the 0-30 update came in
- mostly my surface was loosing wifi
- I removed the 0-30 kernel but i still had wifi inconsistences but not as often
- my wife just told me her phone was inconsistently connecting too i noticed my phone was a bit off too
- i reset the router again.
- so far everything is more consistent on all devices
- I will let you know if the problem is gone from my surface

I am wondering if the router could have been the cause of the disconnections and the 0-30 update made things worse.
if i can get a consistent signal for a few days i will be looking to getting a new router

thanks for taking your time into looking at this

[carlosroque]

So I ended up getting a new router and that fixed my issue with wifi. I still find it unsettling that a router can cause the kernel to go bonkers and kill the interface. I got the router Thursday (I am posting the following Monday) and ever since, my surface has been connected without any issues.

thanks for you help

[jglen490]

If it's working now, but was intermittent or worse before with any kernel, it was very likely a communications/handshake error with the router that caused the interface to not work properly. I've had routers go bad - some quickly, some slowly - and it made the wifi (or ethernet) device look like it was failing. Hopefully all is well now, but come back if things are not working right.

[carlosroque]

thanks so much.
it does make sense. originally ubuntu 18.04 was inconsistent with the surface pro but installing to kubuntu 18.04 fixed all my issues until the power flickered and made a mess out of the network. i think it was just an unfortunate coincidence that the kernel update came at the same time adding to the confusion. so the router could have been going bad and the power flicker finally did it in.