Another Dell Studio 1558 wireless problem

[AntoniusUno]

rfkill list gives me:

@ubuntu:~$ rfkill list
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: yes

I will look into the other post and come back if any or no results.

[bkratz]

rfkill list gives me:



I will look into the other post and come back if any or no results.

Well I am probably wrong! , but I think the hardblock is referring to the switch itself, so either it is in the wrong state or not being read correctly.

[bkratz]

Here is a bug report that sure sounds familiar, it is about a different Dell Model, but it seems to apply.

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14098

and another similar thread

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1377829

[AntoniusUno]

Just got added another problem, after updating I can't boot anymore. "Must load kernel first".

Nice... Have seen this bug report already but if ubuntu wants to become a usable os for the common people this kind of errors should not happen. It is too much work to get it up and running. Once running it is great and all but you have to persevere.

Will post more findings once tried.

[coffeeaddict22]

Don't blame Ubuntu. Hardware vendors produce cards, and then for some dumb reason won't let anyone access the info needed to write drivers for them; you can have any driver for a Broadcom card, so long as it's written by Broadcom.

The Linux drivers are constantly improving, but while hardware vendors insist on selling us a chunk of metal without open sourcing the API to talk to it, drivers are a gamble on Linux.

wrt your card, I know there were some HP models where there was a chip that held the card status, and was only accessible in Windows. Boot into Win, and make sure your card is enabled. Going by the other post, disabling dell-laptop or updating your BIOS would be a good plan too.

[antonius uno]

Don't blame Ubuntu. Hardware vendors produce cards, and then for some dumb reason won't let anyone access the info needed to write drivers for them; you can have any driver for a Broadcom card, so long as it's written by Broadcom.

The Linux drivers are constantly improving, but while hardware vendors insist on selling us a chunk of metal without open sourcing the API to talk to it, drivers are a gamble on Linux.

wrt your card, I know there were some HP models where there was a chip that held the card status, and was only accessible in Windows. Boot into Win, and make sure your card is enabled. Going by the other post, disabling dell-laptop or updating your BIOS would be a good plan too.

Yep done that check already. I noticed that the wireless on/off key did not show any apparent signs of functioning in Ubuntu but did indeed turn off the wireless. Did make sure windows has wireless, but still ubuntu does not recognise it. I am very reluctant though to do a BIOS upgrade as I have very bad experience with that plus it worked first time I installed Karmic so there should not be a reason why it does not work now.

[antonius uno]

Here is a bug report that sure sounds familiar, it is about a different Dell Model, but it seems to apply.

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14098

and another similar thread

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1377829

YEP! Worked like a charm. Wireless is back on and working.
thanks you guys. Good support.

sudo rmmod -f dell_laptop was the solution.

[coffeeaddict22]

And the sound?

[AntoniusUno]

And the sound?

As i said before the sound i tried fixing but messed up some other things. I got the advice to wait for next release unless any of you have more info

[AntoniusUno]

OK have to admit, without sound, Ubuntu cannot yet replace Windows 7. So I dive into this issue.

Sound is slightly more complicated at the moment, as I think it's changing in the Lucid (10.04) mix, so doing a whole heap of fiddling is probably a waste of time if you can wait a week for the beta. If you want to play, start with the sound troubleshooter; in my experience the trick is to open alsamixer (type it in a terminal) and find what's been defaulted to a level of 0.

ALSAmixer shows all playback levels at max. Had checked that before when running through this post:
[ubuntu] [HOWTO] Fix for Stuck Volume/Multimedia Keys - Ubuntu Forums

Under sound preferences in the GUI I have two options for HW:
1. Analogue stereo duplex
2. R700 Audio device (Radeon HD4000 series)

Currently HW is set to #1. For analogue stereo HW I can also choose input/output/duplex. As far as I understand this option I want duplex because I want speakers and mic to function both (for skype etc).

On the input side I get a signal in the signalbars when testing the mic levels. But I don't hear anything.

So shoot....