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Dmitriy Vinokurov
Asked: 2021-07-12 10:02:18 +0800 CST

WiFi hard blocked on HP 15-ac002ur on Ubuntu 20.04 and nothing helps

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Decided to install Kubuntu on my old laptop HP 15-ac002ur. Everything works fine except WiFi (in Windows it was OK). I've seen very very many similar issues about hard block but none helped. Details follows.

WiFi network device is recognized:

$ lspci | grep Wireless
02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188EE Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

WiFi network adapter is created:

$ ip a
...
3: wlp2s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether d8:5d:e2:4d:ec:ee brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

But it could not be enabled:

$ sudo ip link set wlp2s0 up
RTNETLINK answers: Operation not possible due to RF-kill

rfkill shows hard block:

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

To unblock I've tried:

  1. rfkill unblock all
  2. Pressing airplane mode switch Fn+F12 or just F12 (looks like it does not work at all cause soft block value does not change too)
  3. Blacklisting hp_wmi and hp_wireless
  4. Switching to https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver driver
  5. Reset BIOS settings
  6. Power reset laptop by manual from https://support.hp.com/emea_africa-en/document/c01684768

Interesting thing - few times I've seen that WiFi enables for few seconds and I've even seen surrounding WiFi networks in network manager list but then it disables.

Happily my main laptop is ThinkPad and I face no troubles there but I'm still interested in making this HP work and will be very glad if someone could help.

Thanks in advance.

wireless

1 Answers

  1. I've had some luck in the past using nmclient with Soft blocked wifi devices. Turning radio off and then on.

    sudo nmcli radio wifi off
sudo nmcli radio wifi on
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