Networking unavailable on Dell XPS 9350, QubesOS 4

[jay...@gmail.com]

I decided to try Qubes OS 4 on my XPS 9350 laptop, from USB drive. Mostly it went ok (had to manually specify EFI file in BIOS to make it load), but networking is completely unavailable. I think the reason might be that laptop itself doesn't have ethernet adapter - it connect via a dock station (which has). I believe something has to be fixed somewhere to enable it? The dock station itself seems to be recognized somehow, since I have double external monitors connected to it and QubesOS properly spread over all three (one of the laptop and two external).

I see networking icon in the system tray. But it is red with a cross in the lower right corner and when I click on it it says Ethernet Network "device not managed". What does it mean?

Laptop also has wireless Broadcom Limited BCM4350 [14e4:43a3] network controller, however from dmesg I see that:

brcmfmac: brcmf_chip_recognition: SB chip is not supported
brcmfmac: brcmf_pcie_probe: failed 14e4:43a3

...so it probably is not supported.

Is there anything I can do in either direction to obtain networking in my Qubes OS 4 on this platform?

[jay...@gmail.com]

So... no go?

[bobos]

change your wireless card, I did the same with my XPS.
works now.

its easy to do.

[Alex Dubois]

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 08:28:01 UTC, jay...@gmail.com wrote:
> So... no go?

For the wireless you could check support for it with Fedora community (netVM runs Fedora 26).

[jay...@gmail.com]

What do you mean it is easy to do? Where do you get a compatible wireless card, that is definitely supported by Qubes anyway?

I somehow imagined that getting appropriate driver should be simpler :/

[awokd]

On Wed, January 31, 2018 2:39 pm, jay...@gmail.com wrote:
> What do you mean it is easy to do? Where do you get a compatible wireless
> card, that is definitely supported by Qubes anyway?
>
> I somehow imagined that getting appropriate driver should be simpler :/

It's not necessarily a driver issue; more of a Xen (on which Qubes is
based) pass-through issue. Of the subset of wireless NICs that work
problem-free on Linux, there's a smaller subset that Xen can pass-through
problem-free and an even smaller subset that can be passed through a
QEMU/Xen stub-domain (which is what Qubes uses). I think it comes down to
how virtualization friendly the hardware manufacturer laid out their BARs
and MSI pages and whether MSI interrupts work (and who knows, maybe
there's a QEMU or some other bug somewhere in there too).

I have success with an AR9565 on R4.0 but not an AR928x. If you're going
to be shopping for another wireless card, maybe pick one then search this
mailing list for problem/success reports, or identify which laptops come
with it then search https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/ and see if those laptops
are reported problem free with R4.0?

Longer term, I wonder if a section should be added to
https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/ specifically to list known
compatible/incompatible network cards under Qubes R4.0? Could be painful
to maintain if we expand it to cover PCI devices in general...

[Qubed One]

'awokd' via qubes-users:

> On Wed, January 31, 2018 2:39 pm, jay...@gmail.com wrote:
>> What do you mean it is easy to do? Where do you get a compatible wireless
>> card, that is definitely supported by Qubes anyway?

You can purchase them many places online, even Amazon, for example, for
about $12 USD.

>> I somehow imagined that getting appropriate driver should be simpler :/
>
> It's not necessarily a driver issue; more of a Xen (on which Qubes is
> based) pass-through issue. Of the subset of wireless NICs that work
> problem-free on Linux, there's a smaller subset that Xen can pass-through
> problem-free and an even smaller subset that can be passed through a
> QEMU/Xen stub-domain (which is what Qubes uses). I think it comes down to
> how virtualization friendly the hardware manufacturer laid out their BARs
> and MSI pages and whether MSI interrupts work (and who knows, maybe
> there's a QEMU or some other bug somewhere in there too).

Broadcom wireless in linux has always been a pain. That is because of
Broadcom.

> I have success with an AR9565 on R4.0 but not an AR928x. If you're going
> to be shopping for another wireless card, maybe pick one then search this
> mailing list for problem/success reports, or identify which laptops come
> with it then search https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/ and see if those laptops
> are reported problem free with R4.0?

I can confirm that an Atheros AR9462 works great on 3.2 and 4.0. If
you're open to considering replacing the wifi card, you can email me
off-list and I can walk you through it step by step. It really is easy
to do, even the first time.

[Andreas]

Qubed One - where do I email you re: upgrading the network card? Am actually doing on a G505s, is that any different?