Ubuntu 12.04 and Lenovo E450 Wireless Card

Question

I have Lenovo Thinkpad E450. Just now I installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS(64Bit). Problem is Wireless card is not detected on this Ubuntu, only wired internet is enabled and working fine. So please help me how to enable Wifi on this version of Ubuntu?

Following is the ouput of lshw -c network.

*-network               
   description: Ethernet interface
   product: Ethernet Connection I218-V
   vendor: Intel Corporation
   physical id: 19
   bus info: pci@0000:00:19.0
   logical name: eth0
   version: 04
   serial: 68:f7:28:e5:04:b1
   size: 100Mbit/s
   capacity: 1Gbit/s
   width: 32 bits
   clock: 33MHz
   capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
   configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=e1000e driverversion=2.0.0-k duplex=full firmware=0.6-4 ip=10.0.2.31 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s
   resources: irq:60 memory:e0700000-e071ffff memory:e073e000-e073efff ioport:4080(size=32)
*-network UNCLAIMED
   description: Network controller
   product: Intel Corporation
   vendor: Intel Corporation
   physical id: 0
   bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
   version: 61
   width: 64 bits
   clock: 33MHz
   capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
   configuration: latency=0
   resources: memory:e0600000-e0601ff

Following is the ouput of lspci -knn | grep Net -A2.

    04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:095b] (rev 61)
            Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device [8086:5210]
    05:00.0 Display controller [0380]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Device [1002:6900]

Answer 1

Ubuntu 12.04 does not have support for your wifi card: on my 14.04 system, the driver iwlwifi supports it:

  $ modinfo iwlwifi | grep 8086 | grep 095B
    alias:          pci:v00008086d0000095Bsv*sd00005290bc*sc*i*
    alias:          pci:v00008086d0000095Bsv*sd00009200bc*sc*i*
    alias:          pci:v00008086d0000095Bsv*sd00005202bc*sc*i*
    alias:          pci:v00008086d0000095Bsv*sd00005200bc*sc*i*
    alias:          pci:v00008086d0000095Bsv*sd00005210bc*sc*i*
    alias:          pci:v00008086d0000095Bsv*sd00005302bc*sc*i*
    alias:          pci:v00008086d0000095Bsv*sd00005310bc*sc*i*

(in other words: the info of the iwlwifi driver does list your card, 8086:095B, as one of those supported by the driver), but my 12.04 system does not:

   $ modinfo iwlwifi | grep 8086 | grep 095B
   $

You have two options: update your system, or use backports. Backports are new drivers, developed for newer kernel versions, which are modified so as to be available to older kernels. I show you how to install them, it is quite easy.

Download backports by clicking here, http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/backports/stable/v4.1.1/backports-4.1.1-1.tar.xz.

Now issue the following commands from the directory where you downloaded the package:

   tar xvf backports-4.1.1-1.tar.xz
   cd backports-4.1.1-1/
   make defconfig-iwlwifi
   make
   sudo make install
   sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
   sudo modprobe iwlwifi

and now your wifi will work.

Answer 2

Besides upgrading to the latest LTS version as suggested by Bogdan Willi you could try the following in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install firmware-iwlwifi

Also, check the "Additional Drivers" application in Ubuntu to see if a driver is already installed. It is a non-free driver and thus isn't activated by default.

Besides that a similar question was already answered on SU here: Thinkpad T450 Wifi AC 7265 is not working in Ubuntu 15.04