Re: net manager wireless disabled

[Tony Espy <espy canonical com>]

sheltraw berkeley edu wrote:
> Thanks again Tony
>
> There is a kill hardware on/off switch for wireless on my machine which
> I never noticed before. I have turned wireless on but still not working.

Have you tried re-booting after turning it on?

> Strangely Ubuntu 9.04 was unaffected by this hardware switch. Wireless
> worked out-of-the-box for 9.04! Why is there a wireless kill switch
> anyhow? Seem odd that of all the chipsets on a motherboard wireless
> would have its own user-accessible kill switch.

The wireless kill switch is present so that you can turn off the radio 
for power-saving or say if you're on an airplane.

That said, trying to explain why it worked in 9.04 and not in 9.10 is a 
long story...which I'm going to avoid trying to explain.

Again it also depends a lot on what hardware you have.

Regards,
/tony


> > sheltraw berkeley edu wrote:
> > > Hi Tony
> > >
> > > Thanks for the info. Similar bugs have been reported to Ubuntu and
> > > there oddly appears to be no fix yet.
> > That's because it's not a single bug.  First, there are many brands of
> > Wi-Fi cards each requiring different drivers.  This is then compounded
> > by the fact the various OEMs wire their platforms differently...  thus
> > operation of kill switches is dependent on Wi-Fi driver + platform ( and
> > possibly platform driver ).
> >
> > When you report a bug using "ubuntu-bug", information is gathered from
> > your particular machine which can help developers determine your
> > particular problem.
> >
> > > "rfkill list" tells me that wireless LAN is hard blocked. Do you
> > > know how to unblock?
> > Hard-blocked means that a hardware kill switch has been enabled.  You
> > should check to see if there's an obvious kill switch that you can
> > disable on your machine.  If not, then it's probably an issue with the
> > Wi-Fi driver and/or platform driver.
> >
> > With respect to the HW kill switch, you might want to check the OEM's
> > manual for your specific model.
> >
> > Hope this helps!
> >
> > Regards,
> > /tony