Unable to remove hardware block for wlan

English Hardware
#1

Hi.

I recently installed opensuse 12.3 64 bit on my dell inspiron laptop. I’m unable to turn on the wifi on terminal or using the network manager, because there’s a hardware block


# rfkill list all
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes

I cann remove it only when I turn on the wlan in windows before shutting down. In windows I turn on/off the wifi with Fn+F2, but in opensuse it doesn’t work. Instructions like

rfkill unblock all

don’t fix the problem.

Any ideas?. It’s pretty bothering to have to turn on the wifi in windows.

Thanks in advance for your Help.

#2

There could be a physical “rfkill” switch on the [laptop] to switch off all radio devices (wlan, bluetooth, wwan). It needs to be on. “rfkill” command will only deal with software blocking.

#3

Thanks for your answer. Actually my laptop doesn’t have that kind of switch, the only possibilty should be Fn+F2, but it doesn’t work.

#4

I was afraid that would be your answer. :slight_smile: My ThinkPad has the switch. In Win7 I can also do Fn+F5 which brings up a Lenovo app to individually on/off the three radio devices, but not sure if that does a hard switch in my case. To use anything that hard switch has to be on for W7 or Linux. I guess I should really find out what switch type my Fn+ does in W7.

Ps. I can’t get Fn+F5 in Linux either.

#5

On 05/20/2013 10:16 AM, ndariass wrote:
>
> Thanks for your answer. Actually my laptop doesn’t have that kind of
> switch, the only possibilty should be Fn+F2, but it doesn’t work.

Do you have the module dell-wmi loaded? If not, does that enable your wireless
“switch”? If the module is loaded and it still doesn’t work, your Dell laptop is
not handled correctly, and you will need to contact the upstream developers.
These are not openSUSE people. I would create a report on bugzilla.kernel.org.