I hadn’t updated one of my old laptops in a bit (since kernel 6.15) using Tumbleweed. So I updated, and behold, no Wifi (at all). dmesg says:
driver unable to support your firmware api
I had to reboot and use the 6.15 kernel from the last time I updated the laptop.
Just FYI as I don’t have a solution.
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=220805
“I’ve done a lot of Google searches and it seems I’m the only one with this problem, …”
Well, now there are at least “three of us”: you, the user from the thread in the kernel bugzilla and me.
You are using openSUSE TW, “eddy02” is running rawhide (which is the “TW” of Fedora IIRC) and I am running the Alpine Linux kernel on my (also quite old) machine.
Maybe the rather old and therefor rare hardware is the reason why this bug hasn’t got a lot of attention (yet).
As there has been no change to the required firmware file (iwlwifi-5000-5.ucode) over 10 years (according to the firmware repo on git.kernel.org) and there is also no newer version (like iwlwifi-5000-6.ucode) this is clearly a kernel bug.
AK
I have the same problem. With Kernel 6.11 it works but it do not working with kernel 6.18. Here some dmesg entries:
// with kernel 6.18
[ 186.023666] [ T2451] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Detected crf-id 0xa5a5a5a1, cnv-id 0xa5a5a5a1 wfpm id 0xa5a5a5a1
[ 186.023676] [ T2451] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: PCI dev 4237/1211, rev=0x54, rfid=0xd55555d5
[ 186.023682] [ T2451] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Detected Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN
[ 186.059282] [ T719] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Driver unable to support your firmware API. Driver supports FW core 4294967294..2, firmware is 2.
[ 186.059456] [ T721] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-5000-4.ucode failed with error -2
[ 186.059521] [ T719] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-5000-3.ucode failed with error -2
[ 186.059579] [ T719] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode failed with error -2
[ 186.059630] [ T719] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-5000-1.ucode failed with error -2
[ 186.059634] [ T719] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: no suitable firmware found!
[ 186.059647] [ T719] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: minimum version required: iwlwifi-5000-1
[ 186.059658] [ T719] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: maximum version supported: iwlwifi-5000-5
[ 186.059670] [ T719] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: check git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git
// with kernel 6.11
iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: loaded firmware version 8.83.5.1 build 33692 5000-5.ucode op_mode iwldvm
Has anybody a solution?
This issue has already been reported upstream: 'Linux 6.18 breaks my wifi 5100' - MARC
Yup, that string “Driver supports FW core 4294967294…2, firmware is 2.” in the error message looks familiar (and really weird).
Fortunately, the people in the thread at bugzilla.kernel.org seemed to have caught up with this.
AK
A fix has been committed to the “Wireless tree for the current Linux release”, so it will quite likely be included in (one of the) next stable releases of the 6.18 branch with 6.18.2 being the first candidate (but no guarantees here).
AK
If I’m not mistaken, the bugfix did not make it into 6.18.2. But please correct me if I’m wrong.
No, commit ca58982 is not part of 6.18.2. So, the only solution, for the time being, is to downgrade to kernel 6.17.X.
JFYI: The commit from https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wireless/wireless.git/commit/?id=ca5898222914f399797cea1aeb0ce77109ca2e62 will be part of kernel 6.18.4, which might be released on Fri, 9 Jan.
uname -r
6.18.4-0-lts
(Yeah, I know, not an openSUSE-Kernel, but that’s irrelevant as we are considering an upstream fix.)
lspci -nnk |grep WiFi
0e:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 [8086:4235]
dmesg |grep iwlwifi
[ 30.712388] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: Detected crf-id 0xa5a5a5a1, cnv-id 0xa5a5a5a1 wfpm id 0xa5a5a5a1
[ 30.712398] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: PCI dev 4235/1001, rev=0x24, rfid=0xd55555d5
[ 30.712402] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 AGN
[ 30.775756] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: loaded firmware version 8.83.5.1 build 33692 5000-5.ucode op_mode iwldvm
[ 31.334284] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG disabled
[ 31.334290] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUGFS disabled
[ 31.334292] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TRACING disabled
[ 31.334294] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 AGN, REV=0x24
[ 31.419953] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: Led disabled
[ 65.142179] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: Radio type=0x0-0x2-0x0
[ 65.293099] iwlwifi 0000:0e:00.0: Radio type=0x0-0x2-0x0
Works for me ™
Victory. WiFi is back in latest TW kernel update.