Bug 375345 – Add a mention to rfkill usage for unlocking wireless cards

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: [OLD] Docs on www.gentoo.org

[Description Pacho Ramos 2011-07-16 08:22:08 UTC]

While trying to configure network with net-setup, I was getting wlan0 unassociated because of the following error:
RTNETLINK answers: Unknown error 132

After searching a bit, I found that it's caused by rfkill softblocking the device. It can be unblocked with the following:
# rfkill list -> it will show the kind of blocker causing the problem
# rfkill unblock all -> to unblock it and let network to work

I think that a note to this should be added to handbook as it's non intuitive to find the solution.

Thanks a lot

Reproducible: Always

[Comment 1 Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn 2011-07-16 08:28:50 UTC]

It is not necessary to install the rfkill package for this. The controls can also be reached via /sys/class/rfkill

[Comment 2 Pacho Ramos 2011-07-16 16:35:20 UTC]

OK, thanks for the info :)

[Comment 3 nm (RETIRED) 2011-07-17 01:27:00 UTC]

This is not an acceptable solution. We need something non-intrusive. At no point should users ever touch /sys/.

[Comment 4 Pacho Ramos 2011-07-17 13:09:34 UTC]

Does any option to be passed to kernel command line do the same? Maybe it would prevent people from having to change /sys values... :-/

[Comment 5 Jan Kundrát (RETIRED) 2011-11-18 11:14:43 UTC]

The added information should make it clear that there are machines with physical switches which are mapped to rfkill (like the Thinkpads). I don't assume that their values can still be changed through software.

[Comment 6 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) 2011-12-26 15:05:34 UTC]

I'm on the same line as Jan; I'm also not confident if documenting rfkill would suffice. There are two types of locks, hard and soft. The soft ones can be managed by rfkill, but hard ones can't. I have an Intel wireless (one that uses the ipw2200 module) which I have to unlock through a key combination (rfkill is not possible here).

If rfkill is available on the installation media (minimal livecd) I wouldn't mind adding a paragraph about it (but that would be more something like 

"""
Some wireless cards are deactivated by default. To activate them, please consult your hardware documentation. Some of these cards can be unblocked using the rfkill application. If that is the case, use "rfkill list" to see the available cards and "rfkill unblock <index>" to activate the wireless functionality.
"""

[Comment 7 Pacho Ramos 2011-12-27 11:46:08 UTC]

I am happy with that paragraph, in my case, I tried several ways to unlock it until rfkill fixed the problem :-/

[Comment 8 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) 2013-07-22 14:06:30 UTC]

I've added the paragraph to the wireless part of the handbook/networking instructions.