Ubuntu
gnome-nettool package

cannot enable wireless adapter

Asked by Chris Hicks on 2010-08-27

I have just installed Lucid on a laptop, but cannot seem to get the wireless adapter to work. The Enable Wireless option is greyed out on the NetworkManager Applet. The laptop is custom-built based on a Clevo D4V chassis. I have previously installed a wireless adapter on another laptop using NDISWRAPPER. The .inf and .sys files were easy to identify. However, there are multiple such files on the driver disc that came with the Clevo and I'm not sure which ones to use. The adapter is switched on and it works OK with XP.

From what I can tell, the adapter is a Ralink RT2750. Although there is a package containing the source for the rt2750 driver in the repositaries, the accompanying info suggests that it is already included in the latest kernel.

Pre-empting any request for information in response to my question, the output from sudo lshw -C network; sudo iwlist scanning; cat /etc/network/interfaces; cat /etc/lsb-release; lspci -nn; lsusb; sudo lshw -short; uname -a; dmesg | grep ound; dmesg | grep b43; dmesg | grep wl; dmesg | grep witch; iwconfig; grep b43 /etc/modprobe.d/*; grep wl /etc/modprobe.d/*; sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart is as follows:

  *-network
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: a
       bus info: pci@0000:00:0a.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 10
       serial: 00:90:f5:3c:41:6a
       size: 100MB/s
       capacity: 1GB/s
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 66MHz
       capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full ip=192.168.0.8 latency=64 link=yes maxlatency=64 mingnt=32 multicast=yes port=MII speed=100MB/s
       resources: irq:11 ioport:2000(size=256) memory:ec005000-ec0050ff
  *-network DISABLED
       description: Wireless interface
       physical id: 2
       logical name: wlan0
       serial: 00:11:09:1f:a5:e9
       capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning : Network is down

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=lucid
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.04 LTS"
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 645xx [1039:0648] (rev 51)
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS AGP Port (virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge) [1039:0003]
00:02.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS963 [MuTIOL Media IO] [1039:0963] (rev 14)
00:02.1 SMBus [0c05]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller [1039:0016]
00:02.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] FireWire Controller [1039:7007]
00:02.5 IDE interface [0101]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] [1039:5513]
00:02.6 Modem [0703]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller [1039:7013] (rev a0)
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller [1039:7012] (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller [1039:7001] (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller [1039:7001] (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller [1039:7001] (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller [0c03]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller [1039:7002]
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet [10ec:8169] (rev 10)
00:0c.0 CardBus bridge [0607]: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller [1524:1410] (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10] [1002:4e50]
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0db0:6865 Micro Star International RT2570
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 07c4:a600 Datafab Systems, Inc. Card Reader
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
H/W path Device Class Description
========================================================
system D40EV/D47EV
/0 bus D40EV/D47EV
/0/0 memory 111KiB BIOS
/0/4 processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
/0/4/9 memory 1MiB L2 cache
/0/4/0.1 processor Logical CPU
/0/4/0.2 processor Logical CPU
/0/14 memory 1GiB System Memory
/0/14/0 memory 512MiB DIMM DRAM Synchronous
/0/14/1 memory 512MiB DIMM DRAM Synchronous
/0/14/2 memory DIMM DRAM [empty]
/0/100 bridge 645xx
/0/100/1 bridge SiS AGP Port (virtual PCI-to-PCI br
/0/100/1/0 display RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
/0/100/2 bridge SiS85C503/5513 (LPC Bridge)
/0/100/2.1 bus SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
/0/100/2.3 bus FireWire Controller
/0/100/2.5 scsi0 storage 5513 [IDE]
/0/100/2.5/0 /dev/sda disk 40GB ST94019A
/0/100/2.5/0/1 /dev/sda1 volume 32GiB Windows NTFS volume
/0/100/2.5/0/2 /dev/sda2 volume 5361MiB Extended partition
/0/100/2.5/0/2/5 /dev/sda5 volume 5075MiB Linux filesystem partition
/0/100/2.5/0/2/6 /dev/sda6 volume 285MiB Linux swap / Solaris partiti
/0/100/2.5/1 /dev/cdrom disk CD-RW CRX830E
/0/100/2.6 communication AC'97 Modem Controller
/0/100/2.7 multimedia AC'97 Sound Controller
/0/100/3 bus USB 1.1 Controller
/0/100/3.1 bus USB 1.1 Controller
/0/100/3.2 bus USB 1.1 Controller
/0/100/3.3 bus USB 2.0 Controller
/0/100/a eth0 network RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet
/0/100/c bridge CB1410 Cardbus Controller
/0/1 scsi2 storage
/0/1/0.0.0 /dev/sdb disk SCSI Disk
/0/1/0.0.1 /dev/sdc disk SCSI Disk
/0/1/0.0.2 /dev/sdd disk SCSI Disk
/0/1/0.0.3 /dev/sde disk SCSI Disk
/1 system
/2 wlan0 network Wireless interface
Linux christopher-laptop 2.6.32-21-generic #32-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 16 08:10:02 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux
[ 0.000000] found SMP MP-table at [c00f72a0] f72a0
[ 0.071159] ACPI: No dock devices found.
[ 0.091932] pnp: PnP ACPI: found 11 devices
[ 0.675187] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 0.764992] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 0.857007] hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 0.949046] hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 0.963240] device-mapper: multipath round-robin: version 1.0.0 loaded
[ 0.967938] BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 0 devices found
[ 1.212917] isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
[ 1.696690] usb-storage: device found at 2
[ 18.699140] lp: driver loaded but no devices found
[ 19.432451] nsc_ircc_pnp_probe() : From PnP, found firbase 0x2F8 ; irq 3 ; dma 0.
[ 19.432532] nsc-ircc, Found chip at base=0x02e
[ 19.432792] nsc-ircc, Found chip at base=0x02e
[ 19.454053] yenta_cardbus 0000:00:0c.0: CardBus bridge found [1558:0480]
[ 19.681318] agpgart-sis 0000:00:00.0: SiS delay workaround: giving bridge time to recover
[ 4620.164074] agpgart-sis 0000:00:00.0: SiS delay workaround: giving bridge time to recover
[ 20.509437] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
[ 4624.688046] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
[ 0.021195] SMP alternatives: switching to UP code
[ 0.084926] Switching to clocksource tsc
[ 0.596010] input: Lid Switch as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0C0D:00/input/input2
[ 0.596183] ACPI: Lid Switch [LID]
[ 20.219456] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 175x65
[ 1798.044084] Switching to clocksource acpi_pm
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

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

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:# replaced by b43 and ssb.
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-watchdog.conf:blacklist twl4030_wdt
* Reconfiguring network interfaces... Ignoring unknown interface eth0=eth0.
[ OK ]