Wifi card not detected after installing firmware

[M0rtiferrimus]

I've recently installed Debian Jessie and can't get my wifi card to work. I have an Intel Dual-Band Wireless AC 3165 card, which according to Intel's website is supported by the iwlwifi-7265 firmware. I first installed firmware-iwlwifi after adding the non-free repository to my sources.list, following the directions on the Debian wiki here: https://wiki.debian.org/iwlwifi. When that didn't work, I rebooted, but still had no wireless interfaces detected (iwconfig and ifconfig both just show eth0 for ethernet and lo for loopback). I downloaded the firmware directly from Intel's website and put it into /lib/firmware, but still had no change.

Output of "lspci":

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00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 1904 (rev 08)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 1916 (rev 07)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Device 1903 (rev 08)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device 9d2f (rev 21)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Device 9d31 (rev 21)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device 9d3a (rev 21)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Device 9d03 (rev 21)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d10 (rev f1)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d14 (rev f1)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d15 (rev f1)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d18 (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d48 (rev 21)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Device 9d21 (rev 21)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device 9d70 (rev 21)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Device 9d23 (rev 21)
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1347 (rev a2)
02:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 522a (rev 01)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Device 3165 (rev 81)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 0a)

dmesg has no mention of the wifi card, but does have an interesting interaction with the Bluetooth functionality, which comes from the wifi card. The firmware initially fails to load, then appears to recover and begin working. When logged in I do have Bluetooth functionality.
Output of "dmesg | grep -i bluetooth":

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[    5.811433] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.19
[    5.811446] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[    5.811452] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[    5.811453] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[    5.811461] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[    5.847488] Bluetooth: hci0: read Intel version: 370810011003110e00
[    5.849401] bluetooth hci0: firmware: failed to load intel/ibt-hw-37.8.10-fw-1.10.3.11.e.bseq (-2)
[    5.849448] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load failed with error -2
[    5.849458] bluetooth hci0: Falling back to user helper
[    5.899209] Bluetooth: hci0 failed to open Intel firmware file: intel/ibt-hw-37.8.10-fw-1.10.3.11.e.bseq(-12)
[    6.000696] bluetooth hci0: firmware: direct-loading firmware intel/ibt-hw-37.8.bseq
[    6.000700] Bluetooth: hci0: Intel Bluetooth firmware file: intel/ibt-hw-37.8.bseq
[    6.004501] Bluetooth: hci0: Intel Bluetooth firmware patch completed
[    8.475646] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[    8.475649] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[    8.475656] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized

How can I get Debian to recognize my wifi card if it won't use the firmware I installed?

[debiman]

just to clarify, your wifi card IS recognized.

did you install or do anything else besides firmware?
firmware in itself isn't enough to get some cards working.

let's see what driver - if any - it uses:

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lspci -k | grep -iA5 net

[M0rtiferrimus]

Sorry for the long time before responding.
Output of "lspci -k | grep -iA5 net"

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03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Device 3165 (rev 81)
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 4010
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 0a)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 80a5
	Kernel driver in use: r8169

So I need to upgrade the kernel through jessie-backports to be able to use wifi?

[stevepusser]

Yes, and as stated above, the firmware package.

[M0rtiferrimus]

Well, I've gone out of the frying pan and into the fire. I added backports and installed the 4.8 kernel for my amd64 architecture, the rebooted, and... black screen. I just get a black screen with a blinking cursor now.
After some research online, I edited the boot command in GRUB and added "nomodeset grub_gfxmode=1280x1024x24" at the end of the line that begins with "linux" and ends with "quiet". After that, I was able to boot into what appeared to be the normal graphics environment. Thinking it must have been an issue with the graphics driver, I installed the nvidia-driver package and the nvidia-xconfig package. I ran nvidia-xconfig and rebooted, but now I just get the black screen with a blinking cursor. It doesn't matter if I add "nvidia.modeset=0" or "nomodeset" or "nomodeset grub_gfxmode=1280x1024x24", all of these commands give the same result: Debian begins to boot, I get a text login screen for half a second, and then the screen is cleared and I'm left with only a blinking cursor in the top left corner of the screen. I can't type, I can't login, I can't do anything but press the power button to shut down and try again. Any idea what went wrong?

Note: in recovery mode, I cannot run nvidia-settings to configure the driver. "modprobe nvidia" gives:

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modprobe: ERROR: ../libkmod/libkmod-module.c:816 kmod_module_insert_module() could not find module by name='nvidia_current'
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'nvidia_current': Function not implemented

[stevepusser]

Were you able to boot into the previous kernel? When you install a backports kernel, it's just gets added as the default boot option, the other kernels should still be on the list.

You might have got the black screen because newer Intel graphics on newer kernels require a newer firmware-misc-nonfree from backports, too.

You also have an Optimus system, and should ordinarily run on the Intel graphics, and use the discrete graphics for the demanding applications. For that, no xorg.conf file should be used. You should set up bumblebee-nvidia or bumblebee-nouvea from the backports repo. You should be able to delete that xorg.conf file by booting a Live ISO, and then try booting the standard kernel.

https://wiki.debian.org/Bumblebee

We are getting an increasing number of these Intel and Optimus systems that are too new for Jessie...your other option is to install Stretch and just ride it out until it goes stable.

[stevepusser]

I did a little websearch, and it appears you have the same Intel Skylake 520 graphics Optimus setup that I have, though I have a 940MX Nvidia GPU, so I know that it can work with and requires all those packages from backports to function correctly. At least for the Intel graphics, here's a guide: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=1185

Since it seems we are getting several of these kinds of posts with new hardwarethat requires the backpots a day now, and it will only get worse until Stretch's release, maybe there needs to be a sticky that points to a guide here for detecting Broadwell+ and installing the newer kernels, etc.

Worse case scenario, there's the Jessie-based +backports distro I help with called MX 16. The 64-bit has a 4.7 kernel and the Skylake 520 works out of the box, as will your wifi, because it's "contaminated" with all that non-free firmware by default. There's also a dead easy tool to install Nvidia drivers, and it detects Optimus and sets up bumblebee-nivida automatically, too.

[M0rtiferrimus]

Ah, that fixed the issue with the screen, thanks! I had never heard of Optimus, so when I saw that users with Optimus systems needed to install bumblebee I didn't pay any attention to it because I assumed I didn't have it.
I've been able to boot into recovery mode for editing files and installing packages, so I deleted the xorg.conf file and now the system boots into a graphical interface with the 4.8 kernel without a problem. However, the iwlwifi firmware still isn't being loaded. When booting, I get several error messages saying the modules could not be loaded, and removing and re-loading the iwlwifi module does nothing.
When I try to upgrade firmware-iwlwifi, nothing new is installed or upgraded.

Edit: Here is the output of "dmesg | grep iwl"

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[   13.268838] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-24.ucode (-2)
[   13.268843] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-24.ucode failed with error -2
[   13.268874] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-23.ucode (-2)
[   13.268876] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-23.ucode failed with error -2
[   13.268898] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-22.ucode (-2)
[   13.268900] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-22.ucode failed with error -2
[   13.268930] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-21.ucode (-2)
[   13.268934] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-21.ucode failed with error -2
[   13.268965] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-20.ucode (-2)
[   13.268969] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-20.ucode failed with error -2
[   13.269000] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-19.ucode (-2)
[   13.269003] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-19.ucode failed with error -2
[   13.269034] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-18.ucode (-2)
[   13.269038] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-18.ucode failed with error -2
[   13.269069] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-17.ucode (-2)
[   13.269073] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-17.ucode failed with error -2
[   13.269104] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-16.ucode (-2)
[   13.269108] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-16.ucode failed with error -2
[  337.914099] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-24.ucode (-2)
[  337.914102] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-24.ucode failed with error -2
[  337.914110] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-23.ucode (-2)
[  337.914112] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-23.ucode failed with error -2
[  337.914118] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-22.ucode (-2)
[  337.914120] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-22.ucode failed with error -2
[  337.914126] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-21.ucode (-2)
[  337.914127] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-21.ucode failed with error -2
[  337.914133] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-20.ucode (-2)
[  337.914135] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-20.ucode failed with error -2
[  337.914141] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-19.ucode (-2)
[  337.914143] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-19.ucode failed with error -2
[  337.914149] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-18.ucode (-2)
[  337.914150] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-18.ucode failed with error -2
[  337.914156] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-17.ucode (-2)
[  337.914158] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-17.ucode failed with error -2
[  337.914164] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-16.ucode (-2)
[  337.914165] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-16.ucode failed with error -2