No Wifi on Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (14ARE05), working out of the box with Leap or Ubuntu

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi all,

I am the new happy (?) owner of a Lenova Yoga Slim 7 14ARE05 (the AMD Ryzen 7, 16Gb RAM, 512Gb SSD edition) on which I would like to install Tumbleweed. I tested on a live USB, everything seems to work fairly well except sleep (a known issue, with known fixes, I’ll deal with this later) and… Wi-Fi not working!

As I looked online for hardware compatibility, this was a surprise to me. So I tested with a Leap USB, and there Wi-Fi worked (well, the installer let me configure a Wi-Fi network and reported it working OK). To be sure, I also tested Ubuntu 20.10 in a Live USB, and I could connect to the Internet through Wi-Fi without any problem.

So, this is puzzling: Tumbleweed is not working when Leap 15.2 and Ubuntu 20.10 (both more conservative, even if slightly so in the case of Ubuntu) do work well out of the box.

To be complete, this is not a problem in the Tumbleweed USB image, I tested both KDE Live USB and network install to get the same result. So, this is reproducible.

I tried looking into which WLAN module is loaded, it is “iwlwifi”, the same as the one reported here by a Manjaro user with no Wi-Fi issue:
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/lenovo-yoga-slim-7-14are05-with-4800u-82a2/38541

Any idea how to fix this?

2

You could, perhaps, try installing the kernel from Leap 15.2, and see if WiFi works with that.

If that works, then open a bug report (as a kernel bug).

By the way, if that works you should edit “/etc/zypp.conf”. Look for the line

multiversion.kernels = latest,latest-1,running

and change it to:

multiversion.kernels = oldest,latest,latest-1,running

so that the kernel you just installed (which would be the oldest) won’t be automatically removed on a future update.

3

Thanks for this interesting proposal!

The problem is that I need internet to do something like this… I will try tomorrow if I can manage to connect to my phone’s internet via bluetooth. Maybe in the meantime, someone will come with a proposal that would make the installer able to connect directly to Wi-Fi (one can only hope… ;)), that would be the best. In any case, if this works with Leap kernel, I’ll open a bug report, yes.

4

Just download the rpm for the kernel. You can download while running Windows or while running from a live iso. Then boot Tumbleweed and install the rpm from disk (you should be able to use “zypper” for that).

5

Perform BIOS update.

Summary of changes

General Information:
DMCN34WW:

  1. Update AMD PI_1.0.0.4 PatchC-PatchH with Insyde Kernel 05.41.52.0016
  2. Update SMU 55.71.0
    [PMFW-5178] [ETB] FCH doesn’t assert SLP_S3# in the end of S0i3 entry
  3. Add Option “UMA Frame buffer Size” in BIOS setup
    4. Enable ASPM L1.1 & L1.2 for Intel AX200
  4. Support Lenovo Fn function key driver.
    Fix 238447 [S750_ARE-20H1 RTM]Lenovo Fn function key driver not install.
  5. Update EC DMEC28WW.
    6.1.Fixed the ECR 239178 Run UCSI Get Connector Status - Battery Charging Status Change [Type-C MUTT] FAIL
    6.2.Changed the _BTP function from 1 second to be 2 second and fixed the OS didn’t reset the point if charge from lower than 90%.
6

Sorry, I should have mentioned, I did update the BIOS to DMCN34WW. The issue was the same before and after the BIOS update.

7

Does it every time reconnect?
Here is a bugreport about that:
https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1179517

8

No, the Wi-Fi chip isn’t even recognised (for example, iwconfig doesn’t show the device).

I’ve made some progress! I booted the Ubuntu once again to check and it didn’t recognise the Wi-Fi. So I did quite a few things (reset BIOS, reboot to Windows, etc.) to no avail. The I tried the Leap net install again, which was able to connect to the Wi-Fi. I realised I did that right before testing Ubuntu, so I rebooted right up to the Tumbleweed KDE Live session and NOW it recognises the Wi-Fi.

So, my conclusion: it works as along as the Leap net install was booted before! Maybe an important detail: I hard-shutdown the computer from the Leap install (it was starting the install process, I don’t want to install Leap, although it is a tempting solution right now).

Can any of you make sense of this? Because I sure can’t… I’ll try to install Tumbleweed now and see what gives when it’s on the disk.

9

When it comes to Lenovo Yoga laptops, a problem that apparently causes a lot of the headaches is the 'ideapad_laptop" kernel module. You should create /etc/modprobe.d/99-blacklist-ideapad_laptop.conf with contents:

blacklist ideapad_laptop

And reboot to see if the WiFi adapter appears now.

Otherwise openSUSE and SUSE may not have the driver for the WiFi card in the base repositories - you should check the device model and see if it’s included in any firmware.


sudo lspci | grep Network

You may need to build the driver from source like this (Note: this specific GitHub repo is only for Realtek devices): https://github.com/rtlwifi-linux/rtlwifi-next

Meanwhile, something that I’ve noticed on a Lenovo Legion Y530 which, right out of the box, has the WiFi adapter periodically “disappearing” (it works fine after booting but then suddenly disappears and is not visible as if it has been physically removed… sometimes it doesn’t even show up after booting at all). And it’s not a faulty WiFi adapter - this is happening to any Y530’s (doesn’t matter which Distro - I’ve tried Ubuntu and Fedora). What I’ve noticed is that disabling Bluetooth via modprobe seems to fix this issue (still happens sometimes after waking up from suspend/sleep).

10

Well, I waited to confirm with a few reboots, but the Wi-Fi seems to be working after the install. But this issue with different USB systems (live or install) apart from Leap is making me wary, so I’m keeping these pieces of advice in my head somewhere, in case it starts acting up again…

Thanks all for your help, I’ll try to remember and report here if it finally works or not.