7

I upgraded from Ubuntu 15.10 (on which the driver had no issues whatsoever), to the LTS version 16.04 a day back. I knew I would have to reinstall the wifi driver for my card(Realtek RTL8723BE), and as before I compiled the code from https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new and installed it like always. But to no avail, because iwconfig shows me "no wireless extensions" and "modprobe"ing shows "error: required key missing". I think in the latest kernel ubuntu is looking for signed drivers? If that's the case then how should I go about it? I tried using different options while using modprobe as well (like ant_sel, ips etc) but still the same results. If that's not the case, then what should be the direction that I should start looking into?

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

1

1 Answer 1

7

So, I figured out what the problem was. Since my machine runs on a UEFI BIOS with secured boot enabled, all the drivers that can be loaded onto the driver stack must be "signed". I think in kernel 4.4 Ubuntu, they enforced this sign verification quite strictly. That being said, all I did was to disable the secure boot from my BIOS setting (won't say this is a permanent solution) and now the wifi works like a charm.

6
  • 1
    My machine doesn't have UEFI, yet I still have this issue. Any pointers?
    – cat
    Apr 29, 2016 at 21:50
  • @cat Did you go into your BIOS settings and look for secure boot option? It mainly has to do with the secure boot enabled and if it's enabled then any third party driver can't be loaded. Just try finding the secure boot option in your BIOS settings.
    – shivisuper
    Apr 30, 2016 at 3:48
  • 1
    My laptop shipped with Win 7; it has no notion of secure boot (which I appreciate). Thanks anyways :)
    – cat
    Apr 30, 2016 at 9:39
  • OK explain how on 15 it was working, but on 16 i have to do something in my bios??? Oct 28, 2016 at 7:44
  • 1
    @VasilValchev it depends on what kernel your distro is using. From kernel 4.4 onwards, the driver stack must be signed and thus it creates some issues
    – shivisuper
    Oct 28, 2016 at 22:51

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .