iwlwifi not found on Kali 4.4

[fl@w§eeker]

Hi everybody,

In short: I've installed Kali rolling version on my laptop with existing win7 and Xubuntu. Install ran well, but when I started Kali 4.4 my wifi wasn't working at all. Then I chose Kali 4.3 in the boot loader, and it worked perfectly! So I made a bit of research and I decided to run the same commands on the 2 versions to see the differences. Here is what I found:

# on Kali 4.3 amd64
root@portable-test:/media# uname -a
Linux portable-test 4.3.0-kali1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.3.3-5kali4 (2016-01-13) x86_64 GNU/Linux
root@portable-test:/media# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Kali
Description:    Kali GNU/Linux Rolling
Release:        kali-rolling
Codename:       kali-rolling

root@portable-test:/media# lspci | grep "5100 AGN"
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection

root@portable-test:/media# lsmod | grep wifi
iwlwifi               131072  1 iwldvm
cfg80211              540672  3 iwlwifi,mac80211,iwldvm

root@portable-test:/media# dmesg | grep wifi
[   12.375945] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware iwlwifi-5000-5.ucode
[   12.376116] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: loaded firmware version 8.83.5.1 build 33692 op_mode iwldvm
[   12.446440] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG disabled
[   12.446445] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUGFS disabled
[   12.446447] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TRACING disabled
[   12.446450] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Detected Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN, REV=0x54
[   12.446500] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: L1 Disabled - LTR Disabled
[   24.142147] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: L1 Disabled - LTR Disabled
[   24.145140] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: L1 Disabled - LTR Disabled
[   24.145223] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0
[   24.246877] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: L1 Disabled - LTR Disabled
[   24.249866] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: L1 Disabled - LTR Disabled
[   24.249948] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0

So on Kali 4.3 everything's fine.

# on Kali 4.4
root@portable-test:~# uname -a
Linux portable-test 4.4.0-21-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 18 18:33:37 UTC 2016 x86_64 GNU/Linux

root@portable-test:~# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Kali
Description:    Kali GNU/Linux Rolling
Release:        kali-rolling
Codename:       kali-rolling

root@portable-test:~# lspci | grep "5100 AGN"
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection

root@portable-test:~# lsmod | grep wifi    # no return
root@portable-test:~# dmesg | grep wifi   # no return

root@portable-test:~# apt-get install firmware-iwlwifi  # I've done a update before
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
firmware-iwlwifi is already the newest version (20160712-0kali1).
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  castxml gccxml hwdata libjansson4 libyara3 python-ctypeslib python-dbus-dev
  python-ecdsa python-pyatspi python-tidylib vlc-plugin-notify
  vlc-plugin-samba
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 432 not upgraded.

root@portable-test:~# modprobe -r iwlwifi ; modprobe iwlwifi
modprobe: ERROR: ../libkmod/libkmod.c:586 kmod_search_moddep() could not open moddep file '/lib/modules/4.4.0-21-generic/modules.dep.bin'
modprobe: ERROR: ../libkmod/libkmod.c:586 kmod_search_moddep() could not open moddep file '/lib/modules/4.4.0-21-generic/modules.dep.bin'
modprobe: FATAL: Module iwlwifi not found in directory /lib/modules/4.4.0-21-generic

root@portable-test:~# ls /lib/modules/
4.3.0-kali1-amd64

On Kali 4.4 it seems my hardware is recognized, but the driver isn't loaded. However it's installed, but apparently the directory name isn't correct. So I don't know what to do:
- is it a bug in Kali?
- should I simply rename the folder 4.3.0-kali1-amd64 into 4.4.0-21-generic? (but not sure about side effects....)
- am I missing something else?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Gh0sT.sh]

dont rename but try making a dir with that name and and same files as that of that folder

[fl@w§eeker]

I tried to copy 4.3.0-kali1-amd64 into 4.4.0-21-generic, then I restarted and

root@portable-test:~# modprobe -r iwlwifi ; modprobe iwlwifi
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'iwlwifi': Exec format error

From what I can read on the Internet, something might be wrong with my kernel. As I see there's a new version of Kali from 31st August I'm thinking about reinstalling with it...

[fl@w§eeker]

I finally decided to reinstall Kali with Kali Linux 64 bit Xfce version 2016.2 and everything runs perfectly at first place. Thank you for the help.