Help with Intel 8265 AC card?

astyle

astyle

Discussion: I have a Thinkbook laptop, with an aftermarket Intel 8265 AC card, and FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE installed on it. I do know it's EoL for a couple weeks now, and I plan to upgrade to 15.0-RELEASE when it comes out, but in the meantime, I've got some surprising issues with the wifi card.

Namely - it drops connections. My wifi router is fine, and I can use my phone to connect and surf the Internet. But the laptop (well, the wifi card) behaves wonky. Sometimes a YT video gets cut off for no apparent reason. Sometimes a Forums page does not get refreshed. And even pinging Google fails when I use ping -c 5 google.com, packets just don't get sent. Heck, even pinging the router ( ping -c 5 192.168.1.1) fails.

I tried several times to use service netif restart. Sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn't. Most often, what helps is issuing the reboot command as root. That gets the wifi card unstuck for a few hours, it works fine - and then goes right back to dropping the connections.

I looked in dmesg - it says that the card driver seems to be crashing:
Code: 
wlan0: link state changed to UP
wlan0: link state changed to DOWN
iwm0: device timeout
iwm0: dumping device error log
iwm0: errlog not found, skipping
iwm0: device timeout
iwm0: dumping device error log
iwm0: errlog not found, skipping

Technical details to help with troubleshooting:
Code: 
<pciconf -lv | grep -B4 network>
iwm0@pci0:5:0:0:        class=0x028000 rev=0x78 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x24fd subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x1010
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Wireless 8265 / 8275'
    class      = network

<kldstat snippet>
25    1 0xffffffff84071000    95260 if_iwlwifi.ko
26    1 0xffffffff84107000    17314 if_iwm.ko
30    1 0xffffffff8412a000   1bc6f0 iwm8265fw.ko

<uname -a>
FreeBSD thinkbook.localdomain 14.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE releng/14.2-n269506-c8918d6c7412 GENERIC amd64

In the past, I did complain about wifi roaming, and how it's next to impossible to use bsdconfig wireless to properly connect to a wifi hotspot, esp. if I try to connect to a different hotspot than what I have at home.

So basically, my question is: Is there something that can be done, or am I stuck for the next couple months until I upgrade to 15.0-RELEASE ? I was hoping to squeeze some more juice out of my existing 14.2-RELEASE installation...😰

Any ideas welcome! I can provide more info upon request.

Thanks!
 
Well, wow...

After I tried to solve the problem and to seek troubleshooting help so that I could tease out a hidden issue that may have slipped through my attention and fingers - that's when the card decides to behave...

This is supposed to be FreeBSD - if a driver works with my hardware, it's supposed to work, even past the EoL date of the installation of the base OS... Seems like bending the zeros and ones, imposing my will on them is what I really need to do, just to show the computer that I'm the boss over it, and making the decisions... j/k... This still looks like it will continue until December, though. 😩
 
astyle said:
25 1 0xffffffff84071000 95260 if_iwlwifi.ko
26 1 0xffffffff84107000 17314 if_iwm.ko
30 1 0xffffffff8412a000 1bc6f0 iwm8265fw.ko
Click to expand...

To me this looks weird. Like you are loading iwl and iwm driver...

Either will work for your chipset but I don't think you want both loaded.
 
Phishfry said:
To me this looks weird. Like you are loading iwl and iwm driver...

Either will work for your chipset but I don't think you want both loaded.
Click to expand...
About that, the iwm8265fw.ko is actually impossible to unload and reload, it keeps complaining that the device is busy. That's what tipped me off that I should really reboot the whole machine,and look at dmesg.

I suspect it's just different parts of the same iwm driver.

This thread was originally in the hardware section, a mod moved it to Networking.

My problem is, the setup as described in Opening Post - it worked fine without changes, and for a while. Once something works, I don't mess with it. My problem is not the settings in the TCP/IP stack, it's about the driver for the card being wonky from time to time. I did not do anything special in rc.conf or loader.conf. The card worked fine ever since I installed 14.2-RELEASE on the machine, so I left it alone.
 
#1) Rebooting to reset firmware.
You should really shutdown fully.
I have seen cases where a dual boot machine Wifi would work when booted to Windows first then reboot to FreeBSD. Firmware on card survived warm boot.

#2) Next time you have a lockup of Wifi check to see if wpa_supplicant is working properly.
Simply type wpa_cli and see if wpa_supplicant is responding. I have seen troubles with it.
 
blackbird9 said:
When it fails, do you see any diagnostic messages at the end of dmesg?
Click to expand...
Nothing beyond the dmesg output that I showed in OP... 😅

When I look into my entire dmesg, it also shows my reboots. Last I looked, 3 reboots were recorded in dmesg...
 
I remember having a problem something like that, years ago on an X61... I think it was repeatedly attempting to load firmware, the connection would stay up for a short time, and then crash again. That was on an older intel wifi card too. But I can't remember the details.

I fixed it buy buying a more recent second-hand wifi card on ebay for a few pounds and then everything worked. But I don't have the X61 any more so I can't tell you more detail. I remember the little green antenna in the status leds just above the keyboard would light periodically. And if you tailed dmesg, there were a stream of errors to do with trying to load firmware and failing.

Sorry I can't remember the details, it was a few years ago now, maybe 5-6 years ago.

I remember I gave up bothering trying to fix it in software and got a different wifi card from ebay, and that fixed it. That was running freebsd too. Doesn't really help fix your problem though.
 
blackbird9 said:
I remember having a problem something like that, years ago on an X61... I think it was repeatedly attempting to load firmware, the connection would stay up for a short time, and then crash again. That was on an older intel wifi card too. But I can't remember the details.

I fixed it buy buying a more recent second-hand wifi card on ebay for a few pounds and then everything worked. But I don't have the X61 any more so I can't tell you more detail. I remember the little green antenna in the status leds just above the keyboard would light periodically. And if you tailed dmesg, there were a stream of errors to do with trying to load firmware and failing.

Sorry I can't remember the details, it was a few years ago now, maybe 5-6 years ago.

I remember I gave up bothering trying to fix it in software and got a different wifi card from ebay, and that fixed it.
Click to expand...
This is interesting... my Intel 8265 AC card is now in its 3rd laptop (the Thinkbook) since I bought the card on Amazon many years ago. So one thought that I have after reading the comments is that maybe the card is getting old after it chewed through a few terabytes of data while it was in service under my command. (I know I'm talking like a retired admiral, but hey, I expect my metal to work for me! 😅 )
 
It might be some low-level firmware incompatibility on the thinkbook, or even a h/w fault.

I just had a quick look at dmesg on my X220, I can only see the following 2 lines from the device driver.

iwn0: <Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205> mem 0xf2400000-0xf2401fff at device 0.0 on pci1
iwn0: iwn_read_firmware: ucode rev=0x12a80601
... then the next thing after that is wlan0 being created using iwn0.

Everything works fine, I have it configured together with the cable ethernet as a lagg failover pair in rc.conf, like this

ifconfig_em0="up"
wlans_iwn0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx WPA powersave"
cloned_interfaces="lagg0"
ifconfig_lagg0="up laggproto failover laggport em0 laggport wlan0 DHCP"

Here xx:xx:xx:xx:xx is the mac address of em0.

Everything work great; I plug in the cable, I get cable ethernet. I pull the cable out, and the lagg master switches over to wlan0 automagically, and vice versa.. Of course wpa_supplicant.conf contains the router auth. So i don't need to use network manager or similar software, the whole thing is done in freebsd's network layer. It's a really nice feature. The routing table, firewall etc only need to be concerned with lagg0, the underlying physical NICs are hidden, so its as if the machine has a single network interface. It seems completely reliable, too.
 
Phishfry said:
#1) Rebooting to reset firmware.
You should really shutdown fully.
I have seen cases where a dual boot machine Wifi would work when booted to Windows first then reboot to FreeBSD. Firmware on card survived warm boot.

#2) Next time you have a lockup of Wifi check to see if wpa_supplicant is working properly.
Simply type wpa_cli and see if wpa_supplicant is responding. I have seen troubles with it.
Click to expand...
Well, typing reconfigure in wpa_cli(8) seems to help - apparently wpa_supplicanti(8) re-reads /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, and that forces a re-connection to my router, and then it actually works fine, browser reacts, ping works...

This has me wondering - Shouldn't this re-reading of the config file be a bit more accessible? If it's so damn effective, why hide it? It will probably solve a lot of other issues, like roaming...
 
Also - my ping round-trip times vary wildly, even when I'm successfully connected:
Code: 
# ping -c 5 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=2188.965 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=2542.840 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2687.655 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=2131.225 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=1786.378 ms

# ping -c 5 google.com
PING google.com (142.251.33.78): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 142.251.33.78: icmp_seq=0 ttl=115 time=1144.445 ms
64 bytes from 142.251.33.78: icmp_seq=1 ttl=115 time=1045.041 ms
64 bytes from 142.251.33.78: icmp_seq=2 ttl=115 time=258.696 ms
64 bytes from 142.251.33.78: icmp_seq=3 ttl=115 time=354.120 ms
64 bytes from 142.251.33.78: icmp_seq=4 ttl=115 time=888.665 ms

# ping -c 5 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=904.064 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=608.178 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=284.072 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=83.992 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=230.022 ms

# ping -c 5 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=504.522 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=78.374 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=113.731 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=36.881 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=16.128 ms

# ping -c 5 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=6084.346 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=10092.913 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=10828.760 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=11508.364 ms

--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 20.0% packet loss

When packet loss is 100%, I know it's time to run that reconfigure command - trouble is, I have to run it every 20 minutes!
 
This thread looks similar, it sounds like there have been problems on linux too. Someone says the fix was to put an intel 6300 wifi card in. Might be worth checking if one of those will fit in your laptop.

hellfire103

Thread 'iwn0 keeps going down'

I am currently running FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE on a ThinkPad T400.

I will often be using my device, when the WiFi will suddenly shut off. i3status reports that it's "down" and wifimgr(8) is blank.

I've tried restarting all and any network-related daemons, to no avail, and wifimgr(8) doesn't seem to be able to bring the interface up, either. Also, my hardware switch is still in the "on" position.

I have been getting a few of these errors in /var/log/messages:

Code: 
Feb  5 09:09:45 amethyst kernel: iwn0: iwn_intr: fatal firmware error

And I have attached the full logs from...
  • hellfire103
  • bug iwn iwn0 net network thinkpad thinkpad t400 wifi wifi laptop iwn wpa_supplicant
  • Replies: 12
  • Forum: Networking
 
Actually I don't think that will help you, a 6300 looks like this
1760864365249.png


And your 8265 is one of these

1760864424635.png


So they are different form factors. It sounds like the problem might be the card though.
 
blackbird9 said:
This thread looks similar, it sounds like there have been problems on linux too. Someone says the fix was to put an intel 6300 wifi card in. Might be worth checking if one of those will fit in your laptop.
Click to expand...
I never had issues with this card on Linux, ever.

On FreeBSD 15 I do see:
iwm8265fw: could not load firmware image, error 8

I have these lines in /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
eapol_version=2
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1
 
If you configured for if_iwm but if_iwlwifi is auto-loaded, too,
do you have
Code: 
devmatch_blocklist="${devmatch_blocklist} if_iwlwifi"
in your /etc/rc.conf[.local]?

If not, try adding it.
 
I would also look at your wireless setting. Are you in a radio signal intense area? City versus country. What frequency band are you using?
Have you done site surveys to determine best channel to use. Do you live near an airport? Stay away from DFS channels.

With all this said Intel Wireless worked fine on these * boards with iwm. Now iwlwifi comes along and changes that. I would be following Toms advice.
Try iwm driver.

*=6xxx,7xxx,8xxx Intel wifi chipsets
 
Just a thought, but have you tried reseating the card, and/or cleaning the edge connector with a cotton bud soaked in alcohol? I wonder if its a bit of muck on one of the connectors.
 
Recently I setup an OpenWRT Wireless Access Point. I had limited knowledge. So I start fiddling with the channels for my clients to use.
I looked at OpenWRT signal anaysis charts to find unused frequencies. But I was having trouble similar to yours. After a period of time the client wifi would freeze.
Pings failed but the interface showed 'up'. Thats when I figured out that wpa_cli gives to tools to investigate and it seemed to work to get me back online.

But in the end my solution was to quit fiddling with wireless channels and use the OpenWRT "Auto" setting. My problems disappeared.
My WAP is now as solid as any commercial unit. I only switched from FreeBSD hostapd to test AX cards.
 
I have a 6205-N in my thinkpad X220, it seems rock solid. Ping time to the local hub is consistently around 2ms and to www.google.com is about 10ms. I'm running 14.3R, and using the iwn driver. I have no flags set at all in wpa_supplicant.conf, only the ssid and the psk (encrypted password). I've been using this machine for about a month, I've never seen it drop the wifi connection. I only get 11a speed with this card, I've got a 7260-N on order to test out whether I can get the higher speed 11ac link. But it seems reliable. Bluetooth works too, I can talk to my stereo bt speakers from the X220.

You are using a different driver to me... iwm as opposed to iwn on my box.
 
Presumably you have loaded the 8265 firmware with
iwm8265fw_load="YES"
- as per the iwm and iwmfw man pages

It sounds like it wouldn't work at all without the firmware loaded. Maybe it gets pulled in automatically.

Ha, I just spotted you already mentioned that.
 
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