Updated to 6.14.6-200 and now Wifi doesn't work

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1

I’ve been using Fedora for months on my MSI A19 HX A7V machine. I just updated my computer and I believe it updated the kernel to 6.14.6-200 during this update. After rebooting, my wifi adapter is no longer recognized. Bluetooth is there, but the wifi button is gone. Wired connections works. If boot into windows or from fedora live media, wifi works fine. I have since upgraded to Fedora 42 and made sure everything was updated. I’ve been looking through forums and AI and gotten some information on my situation…

I checked that rfkill wasn’t the problem:
rfkill list
0: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no

I ran the following command
nmcli general status
STATE CONNECTIVITY WIFI-HW WIFI WWAN-HW WWAN METERED
connected full missing enabled missing enabled no (guessed)

I verified the network card is detected:
lspci | grep -i qualcomm
06:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Technologies, Inc WCN785x Wi-Fi 7(802.11be) 320MHz 2x2 [FastConnect 7800] (rev 01)

I checked for the Qualcomm kernel module:
lsmod | grep ath12k
ath12k 679936 0
qmi_helpers 40960 1 ath12k
mac80211 1912832 1 ath12k
cfg80211 1511424 2 ath12k,mac80211
mhi 155648 2 ath12k,qrtr_mhi

I reinstalled NetworkManager NetworkManager-wifi, and atheros-firmware. No luck.

I checked for firmware-related errors:
sudo dmesg | grep -i ath12k
[ 4.436589] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: BAR 0 [mem 0xfc200000-0xfc3fffff 64bit]: assigned
[ 4.436604] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: enabling device (0000 → 0002)
[ 4.436865] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: MSI vectors: 16
[ 4.436869] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: Hardware name: wcn7850 hw2.0
[ 5.062012] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: chip_id 0x2 chip_family 0x4 board_id 0xff soc_id 0x40170200
[ 5.062017] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: fw_version 0x1105811c fw_build_timestamp 2025-03-11 07:08 fw_build_id QC_IMAGE_VERSION_STRING=WLAN.HMT.1.1.c5-00284-QCAHMTSWPL_V1.0_V2.0_SILICONZ-3
[ 5.355897] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: ignore reset dev flags 0x200
[ 10.308405] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: failed to receive wmi unified ready event: -110
[ 10.308837] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: failed to start core: -110
[ 10.310657] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: qmi failed to send mode request, mode: 4, err = -5
[ 10.310659] ath12k_pci 0000:06:00.0: qmi failed to send wlan mode off

Grok AI told me that the dmesg output indicates a critical issue with the Qualcomm WCN785x Wi-Fi 7 chipset on Fedora 41: the ath12k driver is failing to initialize the hardware due to a firmware-related problem. It had me verify contents of the firmware subdirectory:
ls /lib/firmware/ath12k/WCN7850/hw2.0/
amss.bin.xz board-2.bin.xz m3.bin.xz Notice.txt.xz

According to the AI these are compressed and shouldn’t be and wants me to uncompress them. I doubt that and haven’t done it.

What else can I do to troubleshoot this?

2

See: ath12l_pci WiFi problem solved with sudo dnf downgrade atheros-firmware-20250311-1.fc42.

3

Wow! I downgraded the Atheros firmware as detailed in the thread you referenced and it worked!

Thank you, you’re a lifesaver!

Forgive my newb question, but now that it’s been downgraded, will my system offer it as an update again that I will have to watch for? Are there other issues I should watch out for with downgraded firmware?

4

If you update your system through a terminal, you can lock the version of atheros-firmware by running:

~$ sudo dnf versionlock add atheros-firmware

If you update your system graphically through a software manager app (like GNOME Software or KDE Discover), you’ll have to downgrade the firmware package each time. This is due to them relying on PackageKit and not using dnf directly and the former lacking relevant integration with the latter.

I have the same problem on my new ThinkPad T14s and agree that this is very frustrating. Luckily, Fedora separates firmware packages and we don’t have to downgrade all of linux-firmware.

1 Like
5

For anyone on Fedora Silverblue 42 see the following:

https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/lenovo-t14s-amd-gen-6-wi-fi-not-working-after-the-latest-update-f42/153486/21