Bug 855503

Summary: Wireless cannot be enabled if disabled in bios
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: tim <tim>
Component: NetworkManagerAssignee: Dan Williams <dcbw>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 17CC: danw, dcbw, mads, tim
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2013-07-31 23:37:55 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description tim 2012-09-08 09:21:48 UTC
Description of problem:
Perhaps not so much a bug as a change request. Depends on how one would look at it. I see it a user friendlyness bug :)
This may also be related to bug 586808, which is about a laptop with wlan hardware switch (this eeePC 1000H doesn't have one, but it might be usefull to keep this feature for other hardware in mind)

After I disabled wireless from the networkmanager applet, the menu doesn't display the option to enable it anymore. A search on internet didn't give much results. I tried putting something like WIRELESS=yes or ENABLE_WIRELESS=yes in /etc/sysconfig/network, but that didn't make a difference. It wasn't until I just randomly tried the output of dmesg that I saw a hint. It said something about wlan being disabled in BIOS although the device was present. Next line said something along the lines of not using the device because it was probably inapropriate for this hardware.. This confuses me, as it seems that disabling wireless from the network manager applet changes this bios setting. Now I don't mind that this setting is changed in BIOS, as long as I'd be able to change it back or at least be *told* that is was changing my BIOS settings..

By the way: something much like this happens when enabling flight mode from gnome-control-center. Flight mode can not be disabled afterwards.. Although, please note that I use XFCE.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
0.9.4.0

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Make sure wireless is enabled in bios.
2. Disable wireless using the network manager applet.
3. Notice the option to enable wireless is gone.
4. Reboot, enable wireless in bios.
5. Notice the option to enable wireless is now back (though unchecked, which is fine to me)
6. Enable wireless using the networkmanager applet.
7. Open the gnome-control-center.
8. Go to network settings.
9. Enable flight mode.
10. Notice the option to disable flight mode is not there.
11. Reboot, enable wireless in bios.
  
Actual results:
Confusing functionality

Expected results:
Better integration between the parts involved so that the user gets more understandible behaviour.

Additional info:
I have not tested the reproducability on other environments than xfce.

Comment 1 Mads Kiilerich 2012-10-19 15:55:26 UTC
Bug 735516 seems similar. What you describe works fine with NM on other kinds of hardware. I guess the problem is problems with the hardware support in the kernel or other low level components.

Comment 2 Fedora End Of Life 2013-07-03 22:02:22 UTC
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Comment 3 Fedora End Of Life 2013-07-31 23:37:59 UTC
Fedora 17 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2013-07-30. Fedora 17 is 
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