Lenovo G40 'RTL8723be' - wireless disabled by hardware (wifi and bluetooth)

English Network/Internet
1

Hi all,
In a freshly installed OpenSuSE 13.2_x64, I get Network Manager with its wireless icon disabled and not responsive.
Curiously the network inspector button (from yast when switching from NM to Wicked) it finds my ESSID, however just as NM it does not enable wireless.

Notes of the box:
new Lenovo G40
fresh installed opensuse 13.2 with KDE
All defaults available updates of suse, bios etc.
On windows 8.1 partition, wireless works fine

My attempts to solve it included:

  • updating all using default repos as well as packman’s repos;
  • tried with disabled secure boot;
  • login as root;
  • enabled legacy OS at BIOS;
  • checking afer resuming (in some posts they recomment to check it due to ACPI issues);
  • moving network to the top of the booting order at BIOS (also this was posted as a solution for some users with similar issues);
  • used rfkill unblock all, but wlan and bluetooth are still hardware blocked.
  • Tried with a Live CD of OpenSuSE Rescue 13.2, with the same result (no wifi nor bluetooth).

note:Left mouse of the touchpad does not work neither but that is another issue for later.

here some outputs:

lenovo:/home/user # lspci -nnk
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter [10ec:b723]
        Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:b736]
        Kernel driver in use: rtl8723be
        Kernel modules: rtl8723be
03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168] (rev 10)
        Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:3816]
        Kernel driver in use: r8169
        Kernel modules: r8169

lenovo:/home/user # iwconfig
enp3s0    no wireless extensions.

wlp2s0    IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=0 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
          
lo        no wireless extensions.

The module looks fine and active… then I installed RFKILL and tried with it:

lenovo:/home/user # rfkill list all
0: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: yes
        Hard blocked: yes
1: ideapad_bluetooth: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: yes
        Hard blocked: yes
2: hci0: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: yes
        Hard blocked: no
3: phy0: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: yes
        Hard blocked: no

OK so both wlan and bluetooth are hard blocked…
Fn7 key of the notebook, has an airplane logo on it. I assume it is to enable and disable wireless devices. There is no other button related to enable or disable wireless by hardware. So, here we go after pressing it once:

lenovo:/home/user # rfkill list all
0: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: yes
1: ideapad_bluetooth: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: yes
        Hard blocked: yes
2: hci0: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: yes
        Hard blocked: no
3: phy0: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no

Still blocked… then unblocking with rfkill unblock all results with:

lenovo:/home/user # rfkill list all
0: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: yes
1: ideapad_bluetooth: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: yes
2: hci0: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
3: phy0: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no

OK so at least bluetooth looks better, but we still have both “ideapad” hard blocked… :’(
I guess ideapad is not behaving well… any suggestion to tame it? :wink:
many thanks in advance…

2

Just blacklist module ideapad_laptop (try sudo rmmod ideapad_laptop ,if it works you have to blacklist it at startup, but i forgot how).

3

Thanks Gryxx, I am not sure how this happened or what made the trick, but after updating again, NM has access to the wifi-board. I was ready to try by blacklisting the module as you said, but it is working now.
The mousepad is another thing… so weird that only one of the buttons is not working. I never saw this. I recall mouse devices being fully recognized or nothing at all but never in parts. Saint google shows that it seems to be a common case among some Lenovo notebooks but no solution so far except connecting an external mouse. I am surviving with that.

The case between G40 and its Wifi, can be close despite I am not sure what solved it.
Thanks again