Arch Linux

bigman2126

Member

Registered: 2011-02-25

Posts: 5

Trouble with wireless switch (rfkill) and wireless connectivity.

Hello, this is my first message in this community so please bare with me if this message should be in the newbie part; but I think it's better fitted here. Other than that, I'm glad to be here .

After quite some time in Fedora I'm coming to Arch and I must say I'm delighted, so I wanted to use it in my laptop too which was running an old version of Fedora.

The laptop is an Airis N930 (about 5 years old) with a RaLink RT2500 wireless adapter which worked well in Fedora 11 but I'm having some trouble getting it to work in Arch. The problem is that the connectivity switch in this laptop is kind of a software one: in Windows it's compulsory to have a program which came in the drivers disk so that when that button is pressed (think of it as another key in the keyboard) the wireless connectivity is turned on and the indicator led lights up.

For a Linux based system there's no such program (I think) but the behaviour seems to be different in newer and older systems (I've tried Fedora and Ubuntu recent live environments and the behaviour is the same as in Arch). In Fedora 11 it just works everything's unblocked by default, in Arch the hardware block seems to be on and I don't know of any way to unblock it:

root@laptop ~ $ ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not possible due to RF-kill
root@laptop ~ $ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes
root@laptop ~ $ rfkill event unblock phy0
1298671843.804446: idx 0 type 1 op 0 soft 0 hard 1

Pressing the wireless connectivity button doesn't produce any event... Does anyone know what can I try or how to remove the hard block? Could it be related to newer kernels?

Thank you very much for your time, any fixes, workarounds or ideas are welcomed.

lamegaptop

Member

From: Orlando

Registered: 2009-05-10

Posts: 33

Re: Trouble with wireless switch (rfkill) and wireless connectivity.

Probably a firmware issue. The driver is in the kernel since 2.6.24 -

Is this wireless adapter USB, PCI, or PCMCIA?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi … tup#rt2x00

or just -

pacman -S linux-firmware

Also check that rfkill from core is installed, perhaps.

---

Don't break the silence unless you can improve upon it.

bigman2126

Member

Registered: 2011-02-25

Posts: 5

Re: Trouble with wireless switch (rfkill) and wireless connectivity.

Thank you for your tips lamegaptop. I already have linux-firmware installed and I'm using the supported kernel module for the card (it's a PCI one):

06:01.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2500 802.11g (rev 01)

Loaded modules for it:

rt2500pci              12420  0 
rt2x00pci               3890  1 rt2500pci
rt2x00lib              24866  2 rt2500pci,rt2x00pci
mac80211              178404  2 rt2x00pci,rt2x00lib
cfg80211              120337  2 rt2x00lib,mac80211
eeprom_93cx6            1004  1 rt2500pci

Rfkill is installed too, the output I posted in the first post belongs to the commands I entered in the Arch system. In Fedora rfkill always reports both blocks to be off.

As the Fedora system is running a 2.6.30.10 kernel I tried to run some tests using the LTS kernel (it's a 2.6.32.X right now) in the Archboot live environment, the output of "rfkill list" changed as seen below:

$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
$ rfkill iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=0 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
$ ifconfig
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:264 (264.0 b)  TX bytes:264 (264.0 b)
$ ifconfig wlan0 up
$ ifconfig
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:264 (264.0 b)  TX bytes:264 (264.0 b)
$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes
$ ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not possible due to RF-kill

This behaviour was the same when running the default Arch kernel in Archboot. I'm thinking in extracting the kernel configuration from the Fedora kernel and use it to build a new one and see if it helps, although I'm not sure where the problem may be.

bigman2126

Member

Registered: 2011-02-25

Posts: 5

Re: Trouble with wireless switch (rfkill) and wireless connectivity.

I have built a kernel 2.6.30.10 using Fedora's config and Arch's config (Arch's one modified  to match 2.6.30.10) and both allow me to perform an "ifconfig wlan0 up". Rfkill reports both blocks to be off. The problem is I can't get the mouse or keyboard to work in a X environment so I'm still trying to get newer kernels to report the hard block off.

Is it possible to unblock the hard block by software? Or by any means it's not using the hardware switch (as the switch of my laptop is not a switch but a button)?