So I recently got the Lenovo x270, and installed Debian on it instead of the default Windows OS. I’ve come to find out WiFi, as well as ethernet are both shipped not working. I’ve tried to fix it, but nothing has worked so far. I switched from straight Debian 8 to Kali to see if it was just a problem in base Debian, but it wasn’t. Laptop specs related to issue:
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265
Kali Linux (Kernel 4.0.0)
1 Ethernet port
I installed the Intel drivers needed for the 8265 (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking/000005511.html). However, this requires a kernel version of 4.6, which it doesn’t seem I can get without apt-get which I can’t use because I don’t have internet.
I also attempted to manually add the ethernet using https://wiki.debian.org/NetworkConfiguration#Setting_up_an_Ethernet_Interface and a few other sources I’ve now lost, but that didn’t work either. The main problem I’m having is it seems you need internet to be able to install various packages that allow you to get internet, so I’m not sure what to do. Any ideas would be a great help.
Thank you.
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Answer
- Without knowing the specific NIC, it’s hard to say which specific driver is required though Lenovo lists the x270 has having an intel NIC. Running lspci should give you the manufacturer and device ID of the NIC, which enables you to lookup the device on sites such as http://pcidatabase.com/.
- The kernel messages might contain useful debugging information, try running dmesg, it might give you information on detected devices or driver-issues.
- The kernel might not have loaded the relevant module for the intel WNIC, try forcing it by running sudo modprobe iwlwifi.
- Wireless networking devices require non-free firmware. For the intel 8265, this is available as a .deb-package at https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=firmware-iwlwifi, .deb-packages can be installed using sudo dpkg -i packagename.deb.