Ubuntu 14.04 (Linux 64 bit) – No network, no USB 3 / USB 2

This mainly applies to 970 chipset mainboards, so your mileage may vary.

Symptom, no USB 3 , or Network, or USB 2 using Ubutnu 14.04 (actually from 12.04 up) 64 bit editions. As this is a kernel problem this should affect most 64 bit linux distros, not just Ubuntu.

There seems to be a problem with all recent 64 bit linux distros and 970 chipset mainboards.

There are 3 options.

1) Use a 32 bit distro.

2) In your BIOS enable IOMMU. This will fix your network and USB 2. You probably wont have USB 3 though 🙁

3) Enable IOMMU in BIOS and add iommu=soft to your grub config. This gets rid of the stream of warnings you get at boot with IOMMU enabled in BIOS. USBB 3 should work too.

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Change the line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash iommu=soft"

Then do

sudo update-grub

and reboot.

This should make the USB 2 and 3 work as well as networking.

Let me know what chipsets/mainboards this helped you with.

[updated]
Changed option 3 as noted by Anthony Barnett. Many hanks for the feedback Anthony.
[/updated]

BaDboD

9 thoughts on “Ubuntu 14.04 (Linux 64 bit) – No network, no USB 3 / USB 2”

  1. GIGABYTE 970A-UD3P, AMD 970/SB950, AM3+. Solved all the USB2/USB3 + network card problems. Thanks a lot!

  2. Subject: Ubuntu 14.04 (Linux 64 bit) – No network, no USB 3 / USB 2

    Message Body:
    Thanks for your post. Option (3) cleared everything up for me. However, I believe that Option (3) should have the IOMMU “ENABLED” and NOT “DISABLED”. You may want to check this out.

    I am using a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 R5 Motherboard, a FX 8350 CPU and Corsair 2x4GB CMZ8GX3M2A16009R (8GB). These items were an upgrade I made 1 week ago to my server. My Server uses Ubuntu 14.04.03 LTS (Trusty Tahr).

    Before finding your information I had already enabled the IOMMU and that appeared to fix most of the USB and Network problems.
    However, after enabling the IOMMU during boot-up I started seeing many Page Fault’s echoing on the screen.
    [x.xxxxxx] AMD-Vi: Event Logged [10_PAGE-FAULT device=02:00.0 domain=0x0016 address=0x00000000ce8fb880 flags=0x0010]

    After I added “iommu=soft” to the line you mentioned in the GRUB file , the Page Fault’s no longer appeared.
    As time goes by I should find out if I have still have any existing and/or new problems.

    Thanks for your information. It appears to have been a great help.
    Regards, Anthony

    1. Your mileage will vary with enable/disable IOMMU in BIOS. In some chipsets it seems to want to be off. In others on is better.

      Glad you got it working. Thanks for providing your feedback, it will be a great help others.

  3. Helped me on 990FXA-UD3. iommu=soft Restored USB 3 functioning after enabling IOMMU in BIOS to get everything else working. Thank you.

  4. Adding the iommu command into gettin grub fixed the usb issues but still no no joy with getting onboard LAN to function. It dies just before the login screen. I have the Gigabyte 970-D3P rev 2.x board. This behaviour has been consistent with all 64 bit distros since 12.04. My last attempt was with 16.04 Mate edition. Interestingly, the LAN behaviour also did the same thing on 14.04 32bit. The only way to get it to work is to reboot the router. Obviously highly annoying!

    1. If rebooting the router brings back your network, then it sounds like a problem with the router.

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