No wireless connection on Toshiba Satellite L55D-B

Support & Help Requests
1

Hello everyone, I have recently joined the world of Linux (actually like a week ago), first installing Ubuntu (Not MATE) 18.04 LTS, and I instantly noticed that the list of Wireless connections was empty. The same happened with Linux Mint, and now on Ubuntu MATE 18.04.1 LTS there is no wireless option at all. I have tried some things that I found on internet but none of them actually worked, and none of them were for the same hardware that I have so it was kind of expected, so I finally came here asking for help for my specific hardware. As it says in the title, I have a Toshiba Satellite L55D-B.
EDIT: I do have connection via Ethernet.

2

Look in Control Panel | Additional Drivers if there is a suggestion to install a package.

Open up a terminal and type, lspci this will give you a list of devices. Find the wireless device and paste that one line here. Probably a Broadcom chip, the number would be helpful (eg bcm43236)

3

When I look into Control Panel | Additional Drivers there is no suggestion to install a package. It says “Using Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver source from bcmwl-kernel-source (propietary)”.

Here it is the line from the wireless device:

05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Limited BCM43142 802.11b/g/n (rev 01)

4

download the package for 18.04LTS (click under Architecture amd64 and select mirror)
(https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/bcmwl-kernel-source) and install it using:

sudo apt remove --purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo dpkg -i bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu4_amd64.deb
5

After downloading and installing it, it said the following:

wl:
Running module version sanity check.
 - Original module
   - No original module exists within this kernel
 - Installation
   - Installing to /lib/modules/4.15.0-36-generic/updates/dkms/

depmod...

DKMS: install completed.
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'wl': Required key not available
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.130ubuntu3.5) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-36-generic

Then I did a reboot, and I still don’t have the option for wireless connection.

6

Take a look at this page.

Good luck @wiwillym

7

That tells me that your current kernel is not 4.15.0-36 what does uname -r show ?

My 18.04 has that kernel, maybe you need to update/upgrade first and make sure you get this kernel, then install that source package. My laptop has the same bcm chipset and I used the same steps.

8

Followed every step, using the PCI.ID that corresponded to my notebook, but still find myself without wireless connection.

9

It actually says:

4.15.0-36-generic

when I type uname -r.

10

Can you paste here the output of dkms status and ls -l /usr/src/

Also, does your laptop have Secure boot enabled? can you disable it in BIOS?
(reboot laptop, press F2 to get into BIOS, security tab, disable secure boot, F10 save & exit)

11

Secure boot was enabled, so I have just disabled it.
As for the outputs, this is what it shows:

  1. dkms status

    bcmwl, 6.30.223.271+bdcom, 4.15.0-36-generic, x86_64: installed

  2. ls -l /usr/src/

    total 20
    drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 oct 21 00:21 bcmwl-6.30.223.271+bdcom
    drwxr-xr-x 27 root root 4096 jul 24 23:11 linux-headers-4.15.0-29
    drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 jul 24 23:11 linux-headers-4.15.0-29-generic
    drwxr-xr-x 27 root root 4096 oct 15 15:50 linux-headers-4.15.0-36
    drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 oct 19 03:09 linux-headers-4.15.0-36-generic

12

output of rfkill list … all of them should be No (Soft/Hard blocked)
(there is a Function key that may have the wifi hardware disabled)

Since secure boot is disabled, does the wifi work now?

13

The wifi is still not working even after disabling Secure Boot.
The output for rfkill list:

ID TYPE      DEVICE                 SOFT      HARD
 0 bluetooth Toshiba Bluetooth unblocked unblocked
 1 bluetooth hci0              unblocked unblocked
14

You got all the files in their proper place … don’t know what else to suggest.

There is a script on the Internet that does a thorough analysis of the wifi env You can get it with:
wget https://github.com/UbuntuForums/wireless-info/raw/master/wireless-info

Then, run it with: . ./wireless-info It will ask for your pw, it will create a file and ask you to paste it to the default provider. Say Y and it will give you a URL (pastebin.com/something). Give me that url

15

Here is the URL of the analysis:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/fy5CqQMkHF/

16

I do not see anything weird in the wireless-info.txt As a last resort, I suggest you repeat the 2 lines we suggested in this thread. Sometimes, re-installing works :slight_smile: Hopefully, it should not give you the modprobe error: cannot insert ‘wl’: Required key not available

sudo apt remove --purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo dpkg -i bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu4_amd64.deb
17

Did it again, and this time it actually didn’t give me the modprobe error: cannot instert ‘wl’: Requiered key not available, but the problem persists. Anyway, thank you so much for your help :slight_smile:.