Realtek 8188CE "wireless is disabled" error, "soft blocked?"

[erans]

Hi there,

I have a Thinkpad E420 with a Realtek 8188ce. I'm having a lot of problems getting the wireless to work. After bumbling with drivers (and installing the correct ones from Realtek), my wireless still won't work. I think it might be because of this:

shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: no
1: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: no
shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$

I have a button on my keyboard that is supposed to toggle WiFi, but it doesn't seem to do anything. Any ideas? This is driving me CRAZY..

Here is my lspci and lsmod:

shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: no
1: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: no
shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$

shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
parport_pc             36959  0 
ppdev                  17113  0 
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     28103  1 
snd_hda_codec_conexant    57511  1 
binfmt_misc            17565  1 
joydev                 17606  0 
thinkpad_acpi          81587  0 
snd_hda_intel          33211  2 
snd_hda_codec         103804  3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep              13604  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                96625  3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
arc4                   12529  2 
snd_seq_midi           13324  0 
i915                  514985  3 
uvcvideo               72195  0 
acer_wmi               23771  0 
sparse_keymap          13898  1 acer_wmi
rtl8192ce             141660  0 
videodev               82052  1 uvcvideo
snd_rawmidi            30486  1 snd_seq_midi
rtlwifi               117393  1 rtl8192ce
snd_seq_midi_event     14899  1 snd_seq_midi
mac80211              294370  2 rtl8192ce,rtlwifi
snd_seq                61621  2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer              29602  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device         14462  3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
snd                    67382  15 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_conexant,thinkpad_acpi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
drm_kms_helper         42136  1 i915
v4l2_compat_ioctl32    17078  1 videodev
psmouse                73535  0 
drm                   227495  4 i915,drm_kms_helper
cfg80211              178528  2 rtlwifi,mac80211
soundcore              12680  1 snd
serio_raw              13166  0 
snd_page_alloc         18529  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
i2c_algo_bit           13400  1 i915
nvram                  14419  1 thinkpad_acpi
video                  19438  1 i915
lp                     17825  0 
parport                46458  3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp
ahci                   25951  2 
libahci                26642  1 ahci
sdhci_pci              13989  0 
sdhci                  27387  1 sdhci_pci
r8169                  48022  0 
shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$

[erans]

Bump

[chili555]

Let's see the result of these commands:

sudo rmmod -f acer-wmi
sudo rfkill unblock all
rfkill list all

Who da thunk a Lenovo would actually be an Acer?

If it works, we can tweak a couple of files and make it Acer-proof.

[erans]

I'll try that now. Is it possible to get this thread merged with the one I just created? Link is here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1770914

Here's the result of those commands:

shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$ sudo rmmod -f acer-wmi
[sudo] password for shayan: 
shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$ sudo rmmod -f acer-wmi
ERROR: Removing 'acer_wmi': No such file or directory
shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$ sudo rfkill unblock all
shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$ rfkill list all
shayan@shayan-ThinkPad-E420:~$

[erans]

WOW, that worked!! How do I make this permanent? You are the man.

[chili555]

WOW, that worked!! How do I make this permanent? You are the man.

Please do:

sudo su
echo "blacklist acer-wmi" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
gedit /etc/rc.local

Add one line above exit 0

rfkill unblock all

Proofread, save and close gedit.

exit

Enjoy your new Thinkpad!

[erans]

Thanks so much. What a weird problem... wonder why that acer thing is there in the first place. Anyway, everything seems to be working great now. I'll link the other thread to this one.

Thanks again! Hope this helps someone else.

[mikec007]

Thanks for this chili555.

I had this same problem on my Acer Aspire One and you fix works well. I used to run Linux Mint 10.04 and never had this problem. Then I tied the 11.04 version of Ubuntu and Mint and had this wifi issue. Glad that I got if fixed though so I can run Ubuntu 11.04 now on my machine.

On a site note, this is my first day totally windows free. I was backing up files to a usb hard drive yesterday, explorer crashed(nothing else was running on the computer but explorer), corrupted the usb drive. The next time that computer booted up it saw a ubuntu live cd.

[erans]

Uh oh. I'm now getting a kernel panic when I start my computer. I did another clean install of Ubuntu and only made the changes in this thread (new Realtek driver, blacklisted acer_wmi), and I still got it. Any ideas? It happens when I enable my wireless after boot, to be precise.

[erans]

This is what it says when I try to enable wireless:

Kernel panic - not synching: Fatal exception in interrupt
Pid: 1509, comm: applet.py Tainted: G D W 2.6.38-8generic #42-Ubuntu
Call Trace:
panic occurred, switching back to text console

EDIT: I uninstalled my wireless drivers, undid the changes to the conf files that had the acer blacklist, and now my system freezes when I try to do the "sudo rfkill unblock all" command. Not sure what I did wrong here.