Looking for some help with linux mint/wifi

Hello lovely and knowledgeable Icrontic people,

I'm a friend of Jackie's and she suggested that I post this here.

My SO recently built his own computer, but he's having some trouble getting the OS to activate the wireless. Anyway I thought it couldn't hurt to see if anyone here might have some suggestions as he has exhausted just about every other avenue for aid that he can think of. Thank you in advance to anyone who has any ideas!

Below is the message he gave me to share:


Hey, do you know anything about linux mint? specifically getting an Intel centrino ultimate-n 6300 to be recognized by the drivers?
Does anyone know a workaround or patch for this? I'm running on a custom built laptop with a intel centrino ultimate-n 6300 wifi card. My Mint 13 distro (i went back a gen after having the same problem with Mint 14) doesn't seem to recognize the wireless card, but running the following command: "lspci -nn | grep 0280" results in "04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 [8086:422b] (rev 3e)", so its gotta be a bug with the drivers. I've noticed this is a common problem with this wifi adapter and several ubuntu distributions, however none of the work arounds for that problem seem to fix my problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

The iwlwifi module is loaded, and the card is supposedly using it. This is the result of the lspci -v cmd:
04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (rev 3e) Subsystem: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 3x3 AGN Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 46 Memory at f7900000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi Kernel modules: iwlwifi
GnomeQueen

Comments

  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    For reference, Sarah's boyfriend Tim had a super rad costume at ICOK

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    midga
  • I'm assuming he let the system install unsupported 3rd party drivers? What normally happens in Mint, a message will pop up in the upper right hand corner asking about unsupported 3rd party hardware drivers, you give it permission and for intel it will usually install the latest iwlwifi driver. It appears to be working on many Debian based environment's. I think it will work, just a matter of getting it cleaned up and the correct driver installed.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    If possible, I would do a fresh install with the current version and make sure to be plugged in to Ethernet while the install/initial booting is happening if possible. It's been a while, but IIRC, it can download patches while installing (at least, Ubuntu did, so Mint could. Anyways, it should be doable, though the driver appears to have a problem with N connections. He's currently getting nothing at all though, correct? On my last laptop with Ubuntu, I only had to have it plugged in then go to the 3rd party driver installer and wireless was there :/

    A very precise description of the issue would be nice as well, i.e. wireless "starts" but doesn't seen anything, or wireless starts and sees but can't connect or wireless connects but drops the connection, etc.

    The most common issue I saw was this:
    The driver iwlwifi got a bug with the N-mode, deactivate it via:
    echo "options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf
    sudo modprobe -rfv iwlwifi
    sudo modprobe -v iwlwifi
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    There are a few other suggestions here:

    http://askubuntu.com/questions/109260/how-do-i-get-an-intel-ultimate-6300-n-working

    Shouldn't need 3rd party drivers for Intel WiFi cards. They open-sourced their drivers long ago thus they are included in the kernel package these days. It seems the 6300 driver just happens to be rather buggy.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    Ah, gotcha. Wasn't sure since I haven't used it in a long while and didn't have intel in my single laptop.
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    A couple of things to check that might seem obvious, but I've run into them myself in the past:

    Make sure the BIOS isn't set to turn off the Wireless when it detects a wired connection. The OS will see it, but just won't be able to use it.

    Make sure the WiFi switch is fully on (I see this at least 2x every day and I work in the IT department).
  • @AlexDeGruven raises some good points. I know several machines have a button to enable/disable wi fi, or even a function key short cut, and sometimes you just need to turn it on.

    Can you tell us the make and model number of the laptop?
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    Yeah, the BIOS switch is a real pain, because you never know if it's set if you don't know specifically to look for it. A lot of businesses will set it so that the WiFi turns off automatically when the laptop is docked. Linux will still see the hardware, but it can't do anything with it, which makes it that much more frustrating.

    WiFi switches are literally the devil. They cause 100x more problems than they solve.
    Cliff_Forster
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian

    WiFi switches are literally the devil Hitler. They cause 100x more problems than they solve.

    They even look like little mustaches. Bastards
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