Created attachment 367955 [details] output of dmesg NetworkManager-0.7.996-6.git20091021.fc12.i686 Kernel Linux grinch.figuiere.net 2.6.31.5-122.fc12.i686.PAE #1 SMP Thu Nov 5 01:52:34 EST 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux Rawhide / F12 up to date as of this AM. Wifi is: 13:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01) NetworkManager say "device not ready" Will attach dmesg output.
I feel stupid about that one: it was the kill switch. However it just outline an issue in NetworkManager that does not say anything about the wifi being disabled by a hardware switch.
Hmm, NM *should* say something about it. At least it does for all the cards I have, including my built-in iwlwifi. The NM menu says that the wifi has been disabled (or something like that). It may be that there isn't rfkill support for your laptop? What do you get in /sys/class/rfkill ? There should be at least one entry there with 'type' = 'wlan', or else there's no way NM can figure out that it's been rfkilled.
The menu indeed say the wifi has been disabled. BUT, it say it the exact same way as if I did disable wireless from the menu. Worse, if I select to enable wireless from NM menu I don't get any error and the menu display "device not ready". All in all, it is just confusing. Solution would be that: 1. if the killswitch is active, that "Enable wireless" be disabled (ie the user not be able to select it. Having it active made me believe that I could enable it, while I couldn't. 2. that the status show "wireless switched off" or anything less ambiguous that then present message. The reason I didn't think of the killswitch in the first place is because it had never worked before back when MadWifi did work and was the only game in town.
For (1) that's the way it should work if you have a hardswitch, ie a slider with on/off positions. For all other cases it's a softswitch and we expect to be able to change the rfkill state. NM doesn't yet poke the rfkill subsystem to do that (we need dbus-enabled rfkilld first) but I think that would fix #1. For (2), yes, that needs to be done when we can detect it :)
So these days if the device is rfkilled, the applet says "wireless is disabled". I think that's sufficient for now; later on with Gnome Shell we'll have a toggle button in the main menu for it, so it'll be clearer.