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Lazer
Asked: 2010-10-28 11:56:01 +0800 CST

Wireless shows up as disabled, how can I get it working?

  • 772
$ sudo iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=0 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off

pan0      no wireless extensions.

$

This is what pops up when I click the two computers icon

alt text

What should I do to get Wifi working on this machine?

$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory
$

$ lspci | tail
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M92 LP [Mobility Radeon HD 4300 Series]
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)
$
10.04 networking wireless network-manager

9 Answers

  1. It is likely that the network-manager state got corrupted. Open the file /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state. It should look something like this:

    [main]
NetworkingEnabled=true
WirelessEnabled=true
WWANEnabled=true

    Change any from 'false' to 'true' to re-enable networking. It may work better if you first stop NetworkManager:

    sudo stop network-manager

    And start it again once done.. Or reboot

    This happened occasionally after wakeup in Lucid. In Maverick this should be fixed.

    • 8

  2. Try this:

    • Install rfkill -> sudo apt-get install rfkill
    • Give this command in terminal -> rfkill unblock all

    Your wireless will work instantly, I hope. I guess you have a Intel wireless card and an Hp laptop, one of them at least.

    • 5

  3. On my Acer 3500 running ubuntu 10.10 the wireless suddenly stopped working after a screwy suspend/hibernation/power-off event. No amount of reboots would renable it. rfkill said the wireless was turned off at the switch, though the light indicating the wireless card is turned on remained on. rfkill unblock all had no effect. 

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

    Network manager indicator said "wireless disabled" instead of "device not ready" as in the question. It was greyed out and not possible to change it to enabled. After a couple hours of troubleshooting and research I finally discovered the solution (for me):

    sudo rm /dev/rfkill && sudo reboot

    Kudos to Philip K. Adetiloye for taking the time to write about in Ubuntu Wireless disabled: SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted. (The error message refers to the output of sudo ifconfig wlan0 up when /dev/rfkill is in the broken state.)

    • 2

  4. Check this one out. It's for BROADCOM CARDS ONLY This worked for me. The button wouldn't work at all, and it wouldn't detect any wireless networks... But I did this, and rebooted, and it works perfectly.

    http://techie-buzz.com/foss/wifi-ubuntu-install-broadcom-drivers.html

    You might have to mess with the terminal commands, depending on where you put the downloaded files. I kept them all in my "Downloads" folder.

    My commands ended up looking like the ones below

    sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware '/home/tsarprodigy/Downloads/wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o'

    Then

    tar xfvj /home/tsarprodigy/Downloads/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2'

    And finally,

    sudo b43-fwcutter --unsupported -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta_mimo.o

    Now all you have to do is restart and it should work just fine!

    You're welcome, and thanks for reading...

    • 2

  5. I did rfkill list and it should no for soft and hard blocks. I still ran rfkill unblock wifi and I was able to see networks again. It has happened to me for the last 2 distros in this manner.

    HP DV9000 Laptop

    • 2

  6. Try pressing any buttons on your keyboard that you're not sure what they do.
    I was getting the Hard blocked and look for a wifi switch; didn't see one. Turns out when Ubuntu set-up the keyboard they assigned a button near the bottom of my screen as the wifi button.

    • 2

  7. I had this (or similar) issue in Ubuntu 10.04. For me, right clicking the network-manager status icon (the two computers), and selecting "Enable wireless" solved the problem for that session.

    I had to do this every time I started the machine, though, the solution was workable for me. I never cared to investigate further.

    • 1

  8. I've seen this happen sometimes, and just right-clicking on the Network Manager applet and re-checking "Enable Wireless" (and/or "Enable Networking") has solved it for me in the past.

    • 0

  9. I had a very similar if not the exact same problem. It seems to be that the WiFi button (rfkill hard block) is not syncing with the rfkill soft block. I had this problem since an Ubuntu update just before Christmas. Before it worked perfectly.

    I solved the issue by making sure the hard and soft block are both set to no. You can check this by running rfkill list all in a terminal.

    • The hard block you can change by pressing your laptop's WiFi button
    • The soft block you can override by entering rfkill unblock wifi

    Check with rfkill list all if both values are set to no and your wireless should work again.

    If you still have problems I have written up a bit more detailed blog post.

    • 0