wireless is disabled by hardware switch - natty 11.04

[Melotten]

HI all,
I'm running natty 11.04 and wireless was working properly till yesterday night. now is not possible to see any network.

I'm on a dell inspiron 1545 and the Broadcom STA drivers are already installed.

tried already a rfkill unblock all, but the results still this:

0: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: yes
1: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no

but the result of this command is changing all the time, few minutes before I got this one:

0: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: yes
1: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: yes

any idea how to solve this? tried to reboot couple of time without results.

the weird thing is that yesterday night and from the very beginning never had an issue with the connection.

Any idea? I think there are lot of people out there with the same issue isn't?

[Bucic]

This is the result of the outrageous f45up of wireless net drivers in 11.04 and I'm also looking for a permanent solution to this issue.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...wl/+bug/732677

So much for the great "let's eliminate paper cut bugs" talk...

[northd_tech]

I know that some "software" wireless interfaces apparently need Windows 7 (or possibly Vista) in order to "enable" the hardware switch. If you still have a Windows partition (dual-boot), that might be worth a try.

Also, it would be good to specify which Broadcom wireless interface (and configuration) you have by running the following terminal commands:

lspci -vvnn | grep 14e4

sudo lshw -C network

lsmod

ifconfig

iwconfig

That said, Ubuntu 11.xx seems to have many recent "issues" with wireless and wireless firmware (I'm still using Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS and the Broadcom STA driver and it works quite well "out of the box"). :/

[chili555]

With due respect to my colleagues, I think it's due to a poor implemetation of the module dell-laptop. Please do:

lsmod | grep dell

If dell-laptop is loaded, remove it:

sudo rmmod -f dell-laptop
sudo rfkill unblock all

Is your wireless working now? If so, we'll need to blacklist dell-laptop.

[seastar]

i have been having the same problem with wireless, and so have followed this discussion. I can confirm that the last proposal (removing dell_laptop) *did* fix the issue.

[Bucic]

With due respect to my colleagues, I think it's due to a poor implemetation of the module dell-laptop. Please do:

lsmod | grep dell

If dell-laptop is loaded, remove it:

sudo rmmod -f dell-laptop
sudo rfkill unblock all

Is your wireless working now? If so, we'll need to blacklist dell-laptop.

Here's what I got

hg1@nx6125:~$ lsmod | grep dell
hg1@nx6125:~$ sudo rmmod -f dell-laptop
[sudo] password for hg1: 
ERROR: Removing 'dell_laptop': No such file or directory
hg1@nx6125:~$ sudo rfkill unblock all
hg1@nx6125:~$

The LED indicator is up but wireless is still not listed in the networking applet, not even after disconnecting the LAN cable and disabling/enabling networking.

[chili555]

I was addressing the OP, Melotten who has:

0: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
1: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no

Sorry if I was misunderstood.

[mezzovento]

With due respect to my colleagues, I think it's due to a poor implemetation of the module dell-laptop. Please do:

lsmod | grep dell

If dell-laptop is loaded, remove it:

sudo rmmod -f dell-laptop
sudo rfkill unblock all

Is your wireless working now? If so, we'll need to blacklist dell-laptop.

This work for me! Thanks chili555. I have a DELL vostro 1720, ubuntu 11.04 64 bit. Before chili555 suggestion:

$ rfkill list
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: yes
1: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
3: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
8: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

switching the hardware button on/off affect only the 3: phy0 block, but the dell-wifi remain the same.

[Melotten]

All this is weird folks.

I spent almost 30 minutes playing with the rfkill command, having different results all the time. after that, after using the option unblock.. magically the wireless came back.

I'm so surprised, there are so many dell laptop around.. I think we will lose a lot of newbies with this issue.

I see the issue seems very common and I would like to help, could you please indicate me the "escalation" of troubleshooting steps to follow?

I will modify my first post so the people will find immediatley a solution.

I would put as first the rfkill command, is easy and seems working quite quickly. what you think?

[apwiggins]

With My Inspiron 1501, I'm also seeing this bug where the wireless is hardblocked. To complicate matters, I'm having a problem in that the keycode for the wireless button [Fn-F2] isn't mapped.

May 10 17:14:51 ubuntu-dell kernel: [  191.862248] kbd_keycode: 15 callbacks suppressed
May 10 17:14:51 ubuntu-dell kernel: [  191.862257] keyboard: can't emulate rawmode for keycode 240
May 10 17:14:51 ubuntu-dell kernel: [  191.862296] keyboard: can't emulate rawmode for keycode 240

Any suggestions?

With due respect to my colleagues, I think it's due to a poor implemetation of the module dell-laptop. Please do:

lsmod | grep dell

If dell-laptop is loaded, remove it:

sudo rmmod -f dell-laptop
sudo rfkill unblock all

Is your wireless working now? If so, we'll need to blacklist dell-laptop.