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:.