Ubuntu

Ubuntu 6.06 - Wireless stopped working.

Asked by Jan Jansen

I posted this question in the Ubuntu Forums:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=199795

"I tried the live cd and found to my delight that my wireless worked. After a while I decided to drop MS and installed Ubuntu 6.06. I did a couple of reboots and the wireless still worked. I did a shutdown, started the laptop again and the wireless no longer works. The bright wireless light is off and switching the wireless switch on/off does nothing. Here is an excerpt from dmesg:

[17179591.736000] ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.1.1
[17179591.736000] ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
[17179591.736000] Warning: PCI driver ipw2200 has a struct device_driver shutdown method, please update!

[17179592.180000] ipw2200: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On:
[17179592.180000] Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work.

Any clues?"

I'm kinda lost, because I'm new to Linux, and the answers were too technical for me.

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Junvarcha
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Junvarcha (jun314) said : 		#1

este es una buena obcion

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Scott Dier (sdier) said : 		#2

Can you try this command in a terminal shell and send the output both when the wireless switch is on and off?

cat /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/*/rf_kill

The numbers reported mean:

  0 = RF kill not enabled (radio on)
  1 = SW based RF kill active (radio off)
  2 = HW based RF kill active (radio off)
  3 = Both HW and SW RF kill active (radio off)

If 1 or 3 is listed can you tell me the model of your laptop? Can you give me the output of 'uname -a' and possibly try to boot an older kernel to see if the problem persists? (ie: 2.6.15-23 instead of 2.6.15-25)

Otherwise, if only 2 is listed then it may be a hardware problem and you may need to contact your hardware vendor.

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Jan Jansen (pingvinklubbene) said : 		#3

Switch on:
$ cat /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/*/rf_kill
2

Switch off:
$ cat /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/*/rf_kill
2

$ uname -a
Linux xxxxx 2.6.15-25-686 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Jun 14 11:34:19 UTC 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

I've tried booting the older kernel, and I've tried booting the live CD. I downloaded the 686-kernel. No wireless.

Revision history for this message
Scott Dier (sdier) said : 		#4

If possible you may want to contact your hardware vendor and talk to them about the issue. A '2' in both positions and that it worked before sounds like it may be a broken switch.

Hopefully they can help you without having to have Windows involved, but they may not be willing to help debug their hardware without it, sadly.

Good Luck!

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Jan Jansen (pingvinklubbene) said : 		#5

This page gave me the solution: http://folk.uio.no/krisvh/linux/cl56.html

I needed to install the Acer Hotkey driver.

Revision history for this message
carolyn (shordie222) said : 		#6

I have downloaded uuntu on my computer and I cannot get the wireless to work it works on windows, not sure if there is something I can do please let me know, thanks