[Solved] Intel AX210 Wi-Fi card not detected in ZimaBlade (not visible in lspci)

Hi team, I want to report a problem.

I will describe this problem as follows:
My ZimaBlade does not detect a newly installed Intel AX210 Wi-Fi card (https://www.amazon.de/Ziyituod-WiFi-Karte-Erweitert-Bluetooth5-2-Unterstützt/dp/B0C7BF9MNX). The card is not visible at the hardware level, meaning it does not appear in the output of the lspci command. My objective is to enable Wi-Fi on the device, but the system doesn’t seem to recognize that the card exists.

And I can reproduce the problem like this:

  1. Power off the ZimaBlade completely and disconnect the power supply.
  2. Install the Intel AX210 card into the PCIe slot.
  3. Reconnect power and boot the ZimaBlade into ZimaOS.
  4. Log in to the system via SSH.
  5. Run the command lspci.
  6. Observe the output: The Intel AX210 network controller is not listed. Only the onboard Realtek Ethernet controller is shown when filtering for network devices.

And I remember I did this to my machine before the problem showed up:
The only change made to the system was the physical installation of the Intel AX210 Wi-Fi card. The system was working as expected before this hardware was added.

And I have tried these operations to fix it:

  1. Hardware Verification: I removed the AX210 card from the ZimaBlade and installed it in a separate Windows 11 desktop computer. The card was immediately recognized as “Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz” and functioned perfectly. This confirms the card itself is not faulty.

  2. Physical Re-seating: I powered down the ZimaBlade, disconnected the power, and carefully re-seated the card in the PCIe slot to ensure it was making a solid connection. The issue persisted.

  3. BIOS Configuration: I entered the BIOS setup and navigated to Chipset > South Cluster Configuration > PCI Express Configuration. I manually changed the link speed for all available PCIe ports from the default “Auto” setting to “Gen 1” . I saved the changes and rebooted, but the card is still not detected.

After these steps, the lspci output remains the same, showing no sign of the Intel Wi-Fi card:

root@ZimaBlade:~# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Host Bridge (rev 0b)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 500 (rev 0b)
00:0e.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Audio Cluster (rev 0b)
00:0f.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Trusted Execution Engine (rev 0b)
00:12.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series SATA AHCI Controller (rev 0b)
00:13.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series PCI Express Port A #1 (rev fb)
00:14.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series PCI Express Port B #1 (rev fb)
00:14.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series PCI Express Port B #2 (rev fb)
00:15.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series USB xHCI (rev 0b)
00:16.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series I2C Controller #1 (rev 0b)
00:16.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series I2C Controller #3 (rev 0b)
00:1c.0 SD Host controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series eMMC Controller (rev 0b)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Low Pin Count Interface (rev 0b)
00:1f.1 SMBus: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series SMBus Controller (rev 0b)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)

[If you used CLI, then you did this by]

  • What user? I have run commands as both root and a non-root user.

  • In what method? All commands were executed remotely via SSH .

And here are the specs of my machine:

  • Device: ZimaBlade

  • OS: ZimaOS v1.4.3

  • Expansion Card: Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz

Your testing methods and procedures demonstrate rigorous intelligence. If possible, could you update to 1.4.4-1 and try again? In any case, our engineers will investigate possible reasons.

Tips for quick upgrade through CLI:

If you are familiar with CLI, you can run these commands to upgrade to the needed version.

# switch to root
sudo -i

# you can find the version number here: 
# https://github.com/IceWhaleTech/ZimaOS/releases

# you can change the version number here
version=1.4.4-1

mkdir /DATA/rauc/.ota/ -p

cd /DATA/rauc/.ota/

wget https://casaos.oss-cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com/IceWhaleTech/zimaos-rauc/releases/download/$version/zimaos_zimacube-$version.raucb

rauc install zimaos_zimacube-$version.raucb

rm zimaos_zimacube-$version.raucb

Useful steps for entering CLI: Settings-> General-> Developer mode view-> SSH Access → enable → Web-based terminal

Input your dashboard username to log into the CLI.

Run these commands one-by-one after logging in.

Look forward to your feedback.

Hello,
Thank you for your quick answer and the support.
Unfortunately, the problem persists in version 1.4.4-1.

It works! Perhaps it was the update, or maybe it just wasn’t plugged in properly. Either way, I’m happy and grateful for the support.