Two wireless card, how do I disable one of them?

[Herber]

I have a Sony Vaio with an intel Pro/wireless 2200BG (calexico2) card that is broken. In windows I disabled this card and installed a USB wireless device (Realtek 802.11n WLAN adapter) which makes wireless connection possible. I cannot get a wireless connection in LUBUNTU because the computer keeps on trying to connect through the original (broken) hardware. How can I disable that original hardware. I tried blacklisting the driver for the Intel hardware in /etc/modprobe.d but unfortunately that seems to interfere with any wireless connection.

[chili555]

I tried blacklisting the driver for the Intel hardware in /etc/modprobe.d

Please show us.

That's actually the best way to disable the built-in, if done correctly.

[fyfe54]

Can you remove the offending card? Then the system can't find it.

[Herber]

The computer I am using is a vaio laptop with a known bad internal hardware intel pro/Wireless 2200 BG, and a USB 802.11n edimax EW-7811Un from Realtek. It is a dual boot system and when running windows I turn off the physical switch for wireless and the computer uses the edimax EW-7811Un USB wireless. In Lubuntu, when I turn off the switch the Networking GUI show no options for wireless connections (which Makes sense). When I have the switch turned to the "on" position the Networking GUI shows my router available to both wireless sources (the intel card and the edimax EW-7811Un). The network manager then repeatedly tries to connect to the correct network, and occasionally show a connection only to fail when used. When I blacklisted the Intel driver, the network manager no longer showed both cards, but continued to fail at obtaining a connection. Now I am thinking that the edimax EW-7811Un USB device is not working properly in Linux. Oh, a wired connection to the computer works fine and I am running 12.04 Lubuntu.

Realtek Kernel Module rtl8192cu
Intel Kernel Module IPW2200


Thank you for any help.

[chili555]

Please show us the file where you did this:

I tried blacklisting the driver for the Intel hardware in /etc/modprobe.d

I suspect there is a slight error we can easily correct but I have to see the exact wording first.

[Herber]

I have not previously posted output in the forums but this is a copy of my modprobe.b

b@b-VGN-S360:/etc/modprobe.d$ cat blacklist.conf
# This file lists those modules which we don't want to be loaded by
# alias expansion, usually so some other driver will be loaded for the
# device instead.

# evbug is a debug tool that should be loaded explicitly
blacklist evbug

# these drivers are very simple, the HID drivers are usually preferred
blacklist usbmouse
blacklist usbkbd

# replaced by e100
blacklist eepro100

# replaced by tulip
blacklist de4x5

# causes no end of confusion by creating unexpected network interfaces
blacklist eth1394

# snd_intel8x0m can interfere with snd_intel8x0, doesn't seem to support much
# hardware on its own (Ubuntu bug #2011, #6810)
blacklist snd_intel8x0m

# Conflicts with dvb driver (which is better for handling this device)
blacklist snd_aw2

# causes failure to suspend on HP compaq nc6000 (Ubuntu: #10306)
blacklist i2c_i801

# replaced by p54pci
blacklist prism54

# replaced by b43 and ssb.
blacklist bcm43xx

# most apps now use garmin usb driver directly (Ubuntu: #114565)
blacklist garmin_gps

# replaced by asus-laptop (Ubuntu: #184721)
blacklist asus_acpi

# low-quality, just noise when being used for sound playback, causes
# hangs at desktop session start (Ubuntu: #246969)
blacklist snd_pcsp

# ugly and loud noise, getting on everyone's nerves; this should be done by a
# nice pulseaudio bing (Ubuntu: #77010)
blacklist pcspkr

# EDAC driver for amd76x clashes with the agp driver preventing the aperture
# from being initialised (Ubuntu: #297750). Blacklist so that the driver
# continues to build and is installable for the few cases where its
# really needed.
blacklist amd76x_edac

#stopping driver to intel wireless
blacklist ipw2200


It is obviously the last entry.

[chili555]

Looks perfect to me. Let's double-check a few other things:

lspci -nn | grep 0280
cat /etc/modules
lsmod | grep ipw

[Herber]

b@b-VGN-S360:~$ lspci -nn | grep 0280
02:0b.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection [8086:4220] (rev 05)
b@b-VGN-S360:~$ cat /etc/modules
# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.

lp
b@b-VGN-S360:~$ lsmod | grep ipw
b@b-VGN-S360:~$ lsmod | grep ipw
b@b-VGN-S360:~$

The Realtek USB device just seems to search for the nework over and over, although with the blacklist, the intel card disappears.

[Herber]

The computer is unchanged after the above sudo modprobe commands. I became suspicious earlier that the problem was the USB device and not the presence of the intel card.

[chili555]

Let's try the updated driver suite compat-wireless. Please get a temporary ethernet connection and do:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-cw-3.6-xxx-generic

For the xxx, substitute your Ubuntu version here:

lsb_release -a

For example, on my machine, I get:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 12.10
Release: 12.10
Codename: quantal

So I would need linux-backports-modules-cw-3.6-quantal-generic. If you have quantal or precise, please proceed. If some other version, post back and we'll help.

Reboot. Does it connect? If not, try again:

sudo modprobe -r rtl8192cu
sudo modprobe rtl8192cu swenc=1

Now does it connect?