builtin wifi not seen by 21.04-jan-13 on asus-ux433f

[Jakob Gaardsted]

release: januar13 daily build of 21.04.
kernel says 5.8.0-25
expected: that laptop's built-in wifi adapter is recognised
during a fresh install.
actual: the system does not seem to recognise the laptop's
builtin wifi during install, and comes up claiming no wifi adapter could be found.
version: I have no idea which package this relates to,
I assume the kernel?, but I guess it may also have something to do with installing (?)

The reason I'm not reporting this directly from the laptop,
is precisely because the network adapter is not recognised...
I'm installing daily build jan 13 of ubuntu desktop 21.04.
The laptop model is northern european Asus Zenbook UX433F
(unfortunately, several UX433F* variants exist.)
  There are no errors (?), it just doesn't register the wifi
network adapter during install.
  I have been running Ubuntu 20 on this machine until now, with
the network working OK, to my knowledge.
I'll be happy to report details of the bug again and in other ways,
if only I could figure out how. I get lost in
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs,
which seems to assume me to see some sort of crash or error.
  I could maybe reinstall version 20 on the machine, to extract
info on how the network adapter used to be determined?

Ironically, the reason I'm installing U21, is because the
touchpad support works horribly on Asus-Ux433, in U20,
and I read somewhere this has been fixed in the upcoming Ubuntu.
Lo and behold, the touchpad now seems to work perfectly,
but at the loss of the network adapter..

  I'm pretty sure this is a bug, because a default recognised network
adapter is pretty much baseline expected in year 2021,
and it's been working with all other linux distros I've tried on the machine
so far. It's a recent 2019 design, so I would expect it to work.

[Jakob Gaardsted (fifticon)]

I've just tried desktop 20.10, and it has same issue.
I'm now trying 20.04.1. Same issue.
This is strange, as I used to use an older 20.04 version on
this same machine, which did not have network problems.
I'm trying version 18 next.

[Jakob Gaardsted (fifticon)]

After some reading up and experiments, I seem to have identified the underlying causes :-(

The wireless interface in question, is
[Cannon Point-LP CNVi wireless-AC., vendor intel. Version 30.] driver = iwlwifi
I guess the issue is that they are not supported properly by
any opensource driver, and that they require proprietary binary/non-redistributable drivers.
Presumably, 'firmware-iwlwifi'.
  Ironically, I have not been able to test/fix it, BECAUSE I HAVE NO NETWORK ACCESS :-)
  This is a tragedy for linux.
Network access, in 2021, is the floppy disk of the 2020 - if you have no network access, you have nothing.
  To resolve it, I instead tried a USB wifi-adapter on the laptop - TPLink AC600.
Ubuntu listed it, but completely ignored it(?). At least, it didn't bring me any network either.

For the actual state of default iwlwifi with the Cannon Point CNVI,
it actually "works", for a few seconds, sometimes.
  Sometimes it will briefly activate the wifi adapter, browse available networks,
and for a brief moment let me connect to and access a network, for 20-30 seconds.
  Then it breaks down, and doesn't respond again, before a reboot.

So, it's not a bug, per se (depends - you COULD say the way iwlwifi breaks, is a bug. I would
assume it intends to support the cannon wireless adapter.)
   Given that a proprietary/nonfree/binary driver presumably exists, that WOULD work (?).

However, as a user experience, it is broken.
My probable action is to give the laptop away to some friends/family who can install windows on it
to get it to work,
and I'll have to buy another different laptop, presumably one that there exists working linux drivers for :-(.

This bug report should probably be closed, unless it should be counted as a bug report against iwlwifi.

[Jakob Gaardsted (fifticon)]

A fresh update. I think I got it to 'work' (or, hump along)
by issuing this command:
'sudo rmmod iwlmvm && sudo modprobe iwlmvm'.'
But I have no idea why this helps, and how would a random user
figure out they need to do this, to install ubuntu..
  A further thing that confuses me, is the naming of the devices.
The wireless interface identifies itself as
"Intel Cannon Point-LP CNVi [Wireless-AC]"
https://linux-hardware.org/index.php?id=pci:8086-9df0-8086-0034
which on that page is claimed to (often) work,
but also to _not_ work in some configurations.
  The weird thing about this that confuses me, is
that this is NOT what I see in dmesg.

  Dmesg, instead, talks about
DETECTED INTEL WIRELESS-AC 9560, REV=0X318
which then quickly spirals into failing, within 30-60 seconds.

So, my confusion is: I do not understand the relationship
between
"INTEL WIRELESS-AC 9560" and
"Intel Cannon Point-LP CNVi [Wireless-AC]".

Thus I'm wondering, if it means the 'Cannon Point LP'
is mis-identified as the "INTEL WIRELESS-AC 9560",
or if it means the Cannon is really implemented with
the 9560 chipset.

Thus, if there is a bug here (well there certainly is something,
since nothing seems to work),
that it might be a network interface wrongly identified..?

By the way, where I've currently gotten it to work,
is with Fedora, as so far I've given up getting it to work with Ubuntu
(The problem is, I need the laptop to do work, not to play endlessly around with devicedrivers.)

[Don Bowman (donbowman)]

Seeing same issue on asus ux433f

the wifi was working perfectly on 20.04 early in its lifecycle
after some time and some updates ~march-may 2022 (sorry cannot be more specific, team member had it who was remove, been reimaged), the wifi stopped functioning.

On 5.15 kernel, it gives a pci config error
on 6.0.1 kernel it give "Can't find a correct rfid for crf id 0x5a2'

It is this patch I think:
https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-wireless/msg214093.html

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.