Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 325101
RF Kill switch on Dell Inspiron 6400/1505 is permanently enabled
Last modified: 2009-01-09 03:44:16 EST
Description of problem: Somewhere between F8T1 and F8T2, the use of Intel 3945 wireless hardware broke on Dell Inspiron 6400/1505 laptops. a) /var/log/messages now reports a warning w.r.t. RF kill switch. b) The Fn-wireless key no longer enables/disables the wireless. c) KNetworkManager does not report any wireless (or wired networks). Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Unknown component How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot system Actual results: Oct 9 11:19:37 fulkol kernel: iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for Linux, 1.1.17kds Oct 9 11:19:37 fulkol kernel: iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation Oct 9 11:19:37 fulkol kernel: iwl3945: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection Oct 9 11:19:37 fulkol kernel: iwl3945: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On: Oct 9 11:19:37 fulkol kernel: Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work. Oct 9 11:19:37 fulkol kernel: iwl3945: WARNING: Requesting MAC access during RFKILL wakes up NIC Oct 9 11:19:37 fulkol kernel: iwl3945: Tunable channels: 11 802.11bg, 13 802.11a channels Expected results: It should be able to enable the 802.11 wireless. Additional info:
I can confirm that on F8 final too. This makes wireless card broken and I cannot use wi-fi anymore. Ubuntu and openSUSE don't suffer from this problem. Please make it higher priority.
This issue appears to have been resolved in F9. It also isn't present in the 10 betas: 9.91 or 9.92. (However there is now a new issue in both F9.91/2 and Ubuntu 8.10 beta's 2.6.27 series kernels which I'll raise soon).
The Fedora10 Preview Release also has this problem. NetworkManager should only disable the internal wifi card and not all wifi cards. In my case, I use an Asus WL-107g PCMCIA card because the built-in broadcom needs a proprietary driver which I don't want to use. Enabling the card, however, renders the system unusable since it seems to interfere with the X.org freezing it (the rest of the system is ok).
This message is a reminder that Fedora 8 is nearing its end of life. Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 8. It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 'version' of '8'. Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 8's end of life. Bug Reporter: Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we may not be able to fix it before Fedora 8 is end of life. If you would still like to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version of Fedora please change the 'version' of this bug to the applicable version. If you are unable to change the version, please add a comment here and someone will do it for you. Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes bugs or makes them obsolete. The process we are following is described here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
Fedora 8 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2009-01-07. Fedora 8 is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug. If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.
Should not be closed, but passed to newer versions of Fedora, 9 and 10.