I'm on a Wifi network and Ubuntu Server 16.04 install is not autoconfiguring my network settings

Question

My Ubuntu Server 16.04 install is not auto-configuring my network settings. After the DHCP setup step the setup program says that my DHCP server isn't responding or that my home network doesn't have one -- which doesn't make much sense since all my other devices have connected just fine and use Dynamic IP assignment.

I've tried over and over again to manually set up a connection through the /etc/network/interfaces file but I'm not getting anywhere and this is getting quite frustrating. What can I do here?

I have a feeling that the installer is not detecting my wireless adapter, as ifconfig shows it disabled by default and my Ethernet (read: wired) adapter as the only one configured. But there doesn't seem to be a way to get the word out to the installer.

PS -- I cannot use a wired connection, because the router is in a different room.

Answer 1

Some things you could do to probe if your network is really being probed by Ubuntu:

1. To probe your wireless card, and see if it is recognized on hardware level:

lspci | grep -i wireless

Example output, that will lead us to know that it is a Intel 5300 card:

0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5300 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection

If your card isn't even probed by lspci could be a wireless card that has no drivers, no pci id mapped or bios setting.

2. See if your wireless card isn't soft blocked:

rfkill list

Example output of a card that it is soft blocked:

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no

In this case, the wireless card is soft blocked and a rfkill unblock 0(zero is the index, the number at left) should make your card available.

3. Check for missing firmware:

dmesg | grep -i firmware is your friend here. Check for any errors that could be related to wireless firmware, like this one that shows a problem with Intel 7260 firmware loading:

iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7260-17.ucode failed with error -2

Obviously, a missing firmware issue will print different errors. The same with different wireless adapters.

Further Reading:

• wireless network not working, interface (wlan0) missing