Bug 251233
| Summary: | bcm43xx_mac80211 module failing to activate hardware | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | [Fedora] Fedora | Reporter: | David Anderson <david> |
| Component: | kernel | Assignee: | John W. Linville <linville> |
| Status: | CLOSED NOTABUG | QA Contact: | Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa> |
| Severity: | medium | Docs Contact: | |
| Priority: | low | ||
| Version: | 7 | CC: | cebbert, chris.brown, davej |
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Target Release: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
| Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | Bug Fix | |
| Doc Text: | Story Points: | --- | |
| Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
| Last Closed: | 2007-10-08 19:02:17 UTC | Type: | --- |
| Regression: | --- | Mount Type: | --- |
| Documentation: | --- | CRM: | |
| Verified Versions: | Category: | --- | |
| oVirt Team: | --- | RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host: | |
| Cloudforms Team: | --- | Target Upstream Version: | |
| Embargoed: | |||
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Description
David Anderson
2007-08-07 20:57:04 UTC
I've now successfully booted the 2.6.22.1-41.fc7 kernel and confirm that the same problem exists. Is this issue about the LED? Does the device connect to the network? Also, please try the latest available F7 kernel -- there have been many improvements lately. Does the problem persist? No, it's not the LED... the device doesn't do anything at all. I was assuming that the message in "dmesg" which says that the radio is turned off by the hardware had something to do with it, and that the lack of LED was a symptom of this. I mentioned that the LED lights on Windows as evidence that the card does work when driven correctly. I've tried the latest F7 kernel - no change. I presume there is a button for enabling/disabling the wireless (like when on an airplane). Have you tried pushing that button? FWIW, some of those buttons are just momentary switches and so only send an event to the driver when pushed (i.e. that fact that it was on under windows doesn't necessarily mean it is still "on"). You might also google for your laptop model and "rf kill" or "rfkill" -- some laptops need special little helper programs to get the wireless enabled. I'm sorry I can't be more specific -- Broadcom and the laptop vendors aren't exactly helpful in this regard. Does any of the above help? Hello, I'm reviewing this bug as part of the kernel bug triage project, an attempt to isolate current bugs in the fedora kernel. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KernelBugTriage I am CC'ing myself to this bug and will try and assist you in resolving it if I can. There hasn't been much activity on this bug for a while. Could you tell me if you are still having problems with the latest kernel? If the problem no longer exists then please close this bug or I'll do so in a few days if there is no additional information lodged. There's no physical button on the laptop. Googling for Dell Inspiron rfkill/ rf kill Bcm in various combinations did not bring me anything helpful. Please advise of what else I can do to help you track this bug. Sorry, I forgot to mention that it's a Dell Inspiron *1501* and I googled on that term too. I think Fn+F2 is the magic combo? It should have a symbol like the one here: http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/18109.jpg Thanks, Christopher, for that- Fn+F2 does seem to be the magic combo. The light comes on, and a message appears in dmesg to tell me that the hardware has been activated. I'm not near an access point right now so am not sure if it's working, but I'll let you know as soon as I can. However, when the hardware is activated, I get this in my /var/log/messages every 6 seconds: Oct 5 19:10:09 hodge NetworkManager: <info> Error getting killswitch power: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.UnknownError - An Error occurred. The Error message is: Could not open file /sys/devices/platform/dcdbas/smi_data. Check that dcdbas driver is properly loaded. "modprobe dcdbas" stops this from happening, but I don't know what I've done by doing that, or if it's meant to be done automatically somehow. Please advise! In my opinion, the bcm43 driver ought to automatically activate the hardware if it's not already activated, by default. Otherwise clueless users like me who haven't figured out the magic keypresses will think their drivers are broken! David Glad you found the killswitch combo. I'm not sure why dcdbas was not loaded for you automatically -- you may want to open a bug for that one. As for turning it on by default, the counter argument is that clueless users might not deactivate their wireless on airplanes. Anyway, in many/most cases the killswitch does something outside of the software's control (as it probably should be). IOW b43 probably can't do it at all. Please try the wireless ASAP and let us know the results now that you can operate the killswitch...thanks! Wireless works (at least, it detected some real networks). Thanks for all the help. (I think that software alone can activate the wifi in this case, because Windows manages to do it, which is why I assumed that the bcm Linux driver was broken). Do you want to re-assign this bug to HAL, or whatever component should be auto-loading the dcdbas module? Please open a new bug for the dcdbas problem...thanks! |
