[SOLVED]Wireless broken with latest update

[Malenyman]

After update could not login, so removed virtualbox guest packages as outlines elsewhere. Login successful.

Now there is no bluetooth and no wireless. Adding the wifi network manually makes no difference, still browser says no connection.

Used an ethernet connection to update everything to latest, did not help.

[Pjotr]

a. Please generate an overview of your system like this:

- Launch a terminal window (this is how to launch a terminal window);

- make the terminal window full screen, to avoid chopped lines;

- copy/paste this command into the terminal:

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inxi -Fxz

(if you type: the letter F is a capital letter)

- Press Enter.

- Copy/paste the output in your next message.

b. Do the same with the following four commands:

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rfkill list all

and:

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inxi -Nn

and:

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iwconfig

and:

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lsusb

[kc1di]

Hello Malenyman and welcome to Linux Mint Forums,

Are your running mint in a Virtualbox ?

if so you'll need the guest additions to make the connection to the host's wireless connections. It will connect as a network connection not wireless..

[Malenyman]

No, I was not running Mint in Virtualbox. There was a Virtualbox bug that stopped some people logging on to Mint.

I downloaded Windows 10 install media to replace Mint because this feels like a redux of the sort of nonsense (releasing unstable kernel and other updates) that used to plague Linux in the past, and the sense of deja vu was very annoying.

But this morning before installing Windows I decided to give Linux one more chance, updated software on ethernet (which included a new kernel), and voila! problem solved. Wifi back.

Pity this sort of thing is still happening, looks unprofessional

[karlchen]

Pity this sort of thing is still happening, looks unprofessional

This does not make it any better; but regressions introduced by software updates, meant to fix bugs, not to create them, happen on all operating systems.
Such problems are not specific to Linux Mint or Ubuntu or Debian.
Just check out the problem reports about the Windows March updates. They had a the side effect of breaking network connectivity on virtual machines.

By the way, so far on my machines, kernel 4.4.0-116 has not broken anything, including the wifi functionality. Will learn soon how kernel 4.4.0-119 behaves.

[JeremyB]

There are a few reasons for wireless not working after an update to 4.4.0-116, it could have been an issue with installing the linux-image-extra-4.4.0-116-generic package or it could have been an issue with a dkms module being built on the old gcc-5 version and that will result in the built module not having the needed retpoline in the vermagic line of the modinfo