I am using OpenSuse 11.4(32 bit) on my Lenovo B460 laptop, and as the title points, am unable to use wireless on it. The ‘enable wireless’ option from icon menu is not greyed out, however clicking it does nothing, it remains disabled.
I installed rfkill and issued the command rfkill list, here is the output:
“0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
1: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
2: ideapad_bluetooth: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
3: ideapad_killsw: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
4: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
5: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no”
I tried rfkill unblock wifi and rfkill unblock all, but it didn’t change anything. So it’s clear that it’s soft-locked, any chance to unlock it w/o installing windows?
On 03/31/2011 01:06 PM, kapz wrote:
>
> Hi Thanks,
>
> I installed rfkill and issued the command rfkill list, here is the
> output:
>
> “0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
> Soft blocked: yes
> Hard blocked: no
> 1: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN
> Soft blocked: no
> Hard blocked: no
> 2: ideapad_bluetooth: Bluetooth
> Soft blocked: no
> Hard blocked: no
> 3: ideapad_killsw: Wireless LAN
> Soft blocked: no
> Hard blocked: no
> 4: phy0: Wireless LAN
> Soft blocked: no
> Hard blocked: no
> 5: hci0: Bluetooth
> Soft blocked: no
> Hard blocked: no”
>
> I tried rfkill unblock wifi and rfkill unblock all, but it didn’t
> change anything. So it’s clear that it’s soft-locked, any chance to
> unlock it w/o installing windows?
It is the Acer WMI (Windows Management Interface) module that is blocking. As I
don’t have an Acer laptop, I have no idea what you do next. Until you clear that
soft block, you will have no wireless. Sorry.
Because you had not become root/got root privileges before you have entered “/sbin/lspci -vv” or something like it? I guess the user of your live CD may have that privileges or the filesystem permissions for are set in an other way on the live system.
By the way:
/sbin/lspci -vvn
will give you also the numeric ID’s for your hardware which may be handy if searching for possible hardware related causes.
This is actually a kernel problem. What kernel version does pclos use? The
rfkill mechanism was changed over the past few kernel versions. If the other one
is older, it may not be paying attention to the switch.
Yep I think it’s the kernel problem, pclos uses 2.6.33-x kernel.
I don’t think this problem has a solution yet…
Hell I don’t even know where to look next, so far I’ve blacklisted brcm80211 and wl module is loaded by default…even that doesn’t do anything.
Am waiting for 2.6.38 kernel as the following web-page indicates: acer-wmi: rfkill and bluetooth enabling doesn’t work as in 2.6.37 though I don’t know when will opensuse release the patch, so far it’s the only major distro to support my sound and graphics together, alas no wifi
On 04/02/2011 02:06 PM, kapz wrote:
>
> Yep I think it’s the kernel problem, pclos uses 2.6.33-x kernel.
>
> I don’t think this problem has a solution yet…
> Hell I don’t even know where to look next, so far I’ve blacklisted
> brcm80211 and wl module is loaded by default…even that doesn’t do
> anything.
Not surprising as it is the acer-wmi routine that is causing the problem.
> Am waiting for 2.6.38 kernel as the following web-page indicates:
> ‘acer-wmi: rfkill and bluetooth enabling doesn’t work as in 2.6.37’
> (http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.acpi.devel/49590) though I don’t
> know when will opensuse release the patch, so far it’s the only major
> distro to support my sound and graphics together, alas no wifi
OpenSUSE will not incorporate that patch until it is accepted into mainline AND
it is suitable for backporting. Not all patches are.
Waiting for 2.6.38 may take a long time; however, you could add the repo at http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/HEAD/openSUSE_Factory/. From
this one, you can get kernel 2.6.38-30.1. I don’t know if there is a pre-built
wl for that kernel, thus you might have to build from source.
On 11/05/2011 03:09 AM, DenverD wrote:
> On 11/05/2011 05:46 AM, john613 wrote:
>
>> $ sudo su
>
> what does that do?
It does the same thing as “su”.
The command sequence reported by john613 should only be needed on Thinkpad E520
machines. Lenovo has a bug in their BIOS that causes the loadind of acer-wmi,
which is supposed to be only used for Acer computers. A fix is known, but it has
not yet been merged into the kernel.
@john613 - If your computer is not a Thinkpad E520, then you need to report your
problem in a separate (new) thread, otherwise the proper fix will never be applied.
You’re absolutly right Iwfinger. I do have a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E520.
If I posted those instructions, it’s because I sworn I saw “acer_wmi” somewhere here… not sure anymore.
)