RFKILL blocked my wifi card without being installed

sberghel · 2013-06-01 22:22:30

I had a netctl profile enabled for my wifi network. I suspended my computer. When I resumed, the network didn't reconnect. When I used

journalctl -xn

that showed that my profile failed because the interface wasn't up. So I ran

ip link set wlp2s0 up

That gave an error message saying that the interface was blocked by rfkill. But then this happened:

skye@laptop: rfkill list
bash: rfkill: command not found

I rebooted and was able to connect to the internet fine (and install rfkill).

What's going on here?

Trilby · 2013-06-01 22:31:39

I suspect the confusion is due to ambiguous use of the name 'rfkill' which, for the present purposes, refers to three separate things.

rfkill is a package (1), that includes the rfkill program/utility (2), which assists in interacting with the rfkill kernel module/subsystem (3).

You had #3 all along, you've only now perhaps installed 1 and 2.

As to why this happened in the first place, that is hard to say if it was an isolated incident. Generally speaking, it is from hitting a hardware switch: either an actual toggle switch often on the side of a laptop, or a key combination (function+F3 or something). If rebooting cleared it, I'd presume it was the latter.

Last edited by Trilby (2013-06-01 22:35:33)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-06-01 22:22:30

RFKILL blocked my wifi card without being installed

#2 2013-06-01 22:31:39

Re: RFKILL blocked my wifi card without being installed

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