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Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update
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    Question Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update

    So I have updated my mid 2010 Macbook pro to the 4.9.9 kernel twice now and for some reason it is disabling my wifi. I wanted to know if any other Macbook pro users have experienced this issue and is there a fix. I've been googling and searching on here, but haven't come across any fixes.

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    Re: Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update

    Quote Originally Posted by P1ngu1n
    So I have updated my mid 2010 Macbook pro to the 4.9.9 kernel twice now and for some reason it is disabling my wifi. I wanted to know if any other Macbook pro users have experienced this issue and is there a fix. I've been googling and searching on here, but haven't come across any fixes.
    Interesting hardware. Any chance of posting a dmesg here ?

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    Quote Originally Posted by bobx001
    Interesting hardware. Any chance of posting a dmesg here ?


    Would this imply me applying the update again? lol I have rebuilt to the version prior to the update.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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    Re: Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update

    I'm confused. At startup you should get a GRUB menu with a list of kernel versions. Once you have applied an update with a newer kernel version, it's the default in the menu, but you can reboot and choose an older kernel version.

    It's important to make sure this is due to a kernel update and not some other component that was updated.

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    Quote Originally Posted by chrismurphy
    I'm confused. At startup you should get a GRUB menu with a list of kernel versions. Once you have applied an update with a newer kernel version, it's the default in the menu, but you can reboot and choose an older kernel version.



    It's important to make sure this is due to a kernel update and not some other component that was updated.


    Excuse my ignorance. I am not super familiar with Linux lol (n00b here). I'm actually in a intro linux course so this has been a learning experience for me. Can I individually install each update rather than doing a bulk update to try and pin point what is causing the issue because I know the jkernel update is important.


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    Re: Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update

    Is this a Fedora Workstation installation? If so the desktop environment is GNOME, and GNOME has a program called Software. It's kinda sorta like the App Store on a Mac/iPhone, or Google Play on Android. You can search for and install/uninstall individual apps, and it has a graphical user interface. Any updates are pretty much just a one shot. That is, all updates show up in Software as "OS Updates" they don't appear individually. So it's an all or nothing thing.

    On the command line, you can use dnf to update things individually. So you can do something like

    dnf update kernel
    dnf update firefox

    But even if you apply the OS Updates with GNOME Software, always three kernel versions are kept. The most recent installed is the default, but it's possible to choose from the menu the previous kernel so you can troubleshoot regressions. Choosing the older kernel only causes that kernel version to be used, it does not revert any other software updates. But the kernel contains all the low level drivers, like video and wireless.

    So if you do an update and wireless stops working, it could be a wireless firmware update that's bad, or it could be NetworkManager, or it could be wpa_supplicant, or it could be the driver in the kernel. It's a bit tedious but you have to isolate to figure out which one is causing the problem. To help isolate, dmesg and journalctl -b can help by showing what's being logged, maybe there's an obvious error happening that'll point to what the problem is.

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    Update:

    Ran the following:
    sudo dnf upgrade kernel

    And the kernel upgraded to 4.9.10
    I rebooted my machine and no wifi. So it is definitely the kernel itself that is killing my wifi.

    Now to rebuild again and report the bug before. Any suggestions as to what information I should gather and present on the bug reporting site.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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    Re: Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update

    You don't have to rebuild anything. Just pick the older kernel in the boot menu... the one listed 2nd. Just arrow down to highlight it, then enter. You need to do this within 3 seconds of the boot menu appearing or it'll boot the newest kernel.

    You can make the 2nd kernel the default but it becomes a sticky setting, and you'll want to test newer kernels hopefully it'll get fixed in a newer version.

    ---------- Post added at 05:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:06 PM ----------

    OH and what you want do to is this:

    'journalctl -b -o short-monotonic > journal_nowifi.log'

    That'll capture kernel, and NetworkManager messages.

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    Re: Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update

    Quote Originally Posted by chrismurphy
    You don't have to rebuild anything. Just pick the older kernel in the boot menu... the one listed 2nd. Just arrow down to highlight it, then enter. You need to do this within 3 seconds of the boot menu appearing or it'll boot the newest kernel.

    You can make the 2nd kernel the default but it becomes a sticky setting, and you'll want to test newer kernels hopefully it'll get fixed in a newer version.

    ---------- Post added at 05:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:06 PM ----------

    OH and what you want do to is this:

    'journalctl -b -o short-monotonic > journal_nowifi.log'

    That'll capture kernel, and NetworkManager messages.
    Haha I didn't fully read your comment before re-installing the OS . It was definitely the kernel. I upgraded the Kernel only and wifi was no longer available. I will be staying away from the update until that is fixed (unless I can update all other aspects except the kernel).

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    Re: Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update

    Quote Originally Posted by P1ngu1n
    Haha I didn't fully read your comment before re-installing the OS . It was definitely the kernel. I upgraded the Kernel only and wifi was no longer available. I will be staying away from the update until that is fixed (unless I can update all other aspects except the kernel).
    Code:
    dnf update --exclude=kernel-*
    That should do it; check the whole list, usually the kernel is listed at the top of the proposed list of updates. You can also insert an exclude line in dnf.conf, do man dnf.conf to read up on that.

    What I suggest is looking up your wifi make model with lspci command, and then doing a search for that make model at bugzilla.kernel.org to see if anyone has reported it. It's not going to get fixed if no one reports it. And it could literally be months unreported. The sooner a bug is filed the sooner it can be fixed. Ideally you do a simple bisect, which maybe you've done if you know the last version it works and the first version kernel it doesn't work in; and you can include that in the bug report.

    Even better is if you do a bisect, that narrows down the regression to the exact commit that caused the problem and will point the finger at a specific person :-) and that usually gets rather quick attention.

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    Re: Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update

    Bug has been reported. Bug ID: 194903

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    Re: Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update

    at startup you should get a GRUB menu with a list of kernel versions

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    Re: Macbook Pro 7,1 & 4.9.9 Kernel update

    Hi P1ngu1n,

    "I upgraded the Kernel only and wifi was no longer available."

    That will actually likely be the problem and it's probably not the Kernel itself that is breaking Wifi. To make the Wifi work you'll need a few things such as the firmware and drivers for your Wireless card, however the packages you need will depend on the Wireless card. The drivers can either be built in to the kernel itself or may need an additional driver module package installing which *must* match the version of the kernel (e.g for a 4.11.5.200 Kernel you need a matching 4.11.5.200 driver module), so if you upgrade the kernel *only* and there is no matching Wifi module it won't work.

    To figure out what you need, you'll first need to figure out what hardware the Wifi card is. So boot in to the old Kernel with working Wifi. As above, there's no need to rebuild, you should get a text based "grub" menu as soon as you boot (actually I have to hold the left alt key when I hear the "dong*" noise on my Mac or it boots MacOS). Once you're in and Wifi is working run:

    Code:
    [root@darkstar ~]# lspci |egrep -i "wifi|wireless"
    02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Limited BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)
    Once we know what card you have we can look at what modules packages are installed, and for which Kernel versions. You may need to add the rpmfusion repo to get the right modules.


    Possible Quick Fix:

    Instead of researching which "Kernel version matching modules" are installed for each kernel, if you boot in to the kernel with the working Wifi and run the following:


    Code:
    [root@darkstar ~]# rpm -qa |grep $(uname -r)
    kernel-headers-4.11.5-200.fc25.x86_64
    kernel-core-4.11.5-200.fc25.x86_64
    kernel-modules-4.11.5-200.fc25.x86_64
    kernel-devel-4.11.5-200.fc25.x86_64
    perf-4.11.5-200.fc25.x86_64
    kernel-4.11.5-200.fc25.x86_64
    kmod-wl-4.11.5-200.fc25.x86_64-6.30.223.271-11.fc25.x86_64
    You'll get a list of rpm packages installed for the current running Kernel. You can then repeat that command on the Kernel which isn't working and compare what's missing. For me it would be the "kmod-wl" package which is my Broadcom Wireless driver.


    NOTE: It's often the case with new Kernel releases that the matching distro driver modules lag behind the release slightly as the maintainers need to update their packages. Sometimes you have to boot the old kernel for a little while until the new kernel module is released... unless you want to get in the habit of compiling your own drivers etc which, imho, is more effort than it's worth these days.


    *Does anyone else with a macbook think that *dong* noise sounds like the first not of "Nothing Comapres to You" by Sinead O'Connor?? I can't boot my Mac without that getting stuck in my head... and I hate that song!

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