Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 807148
can't enable wireless
Last modified: 2012-07-18 13:55:54 EDT
Description of problem: After booting F17 Alpha live, I'm unable to conenct to wifi. Trying to "enable wireless" fails. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kde-plasma-networkmanagement-0.9-0.70.rc4.fc17.x86_64 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. click networkmanagement icon in systray 2. check "Enable wireless" Actual results: the checkmark disappears a few seconds after checking the option, WLAN Interface has status "unavailable" NO ERROR MESSAGE IS REPORTED IT JUST FAILS SILENTLY! Expected results: wifi works as usual; if it cannot be activated for some reason, the user should get an error message stating the reason Additional info: from lspci 02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n/ Wireless LAN controller (rev 01)
I'm sorry if this question insults you, but: Don't you remember if you had wifi turned off by some sort of switch on your laptop? I'm just asking because these two upstream reports seem to be related: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=225115 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=268990 Please, also check if this still happens because it is quite a while after the report. Thank you.
oh, I've forgotten about this report ... from what I recall, the problem was that there had been some bug in the Broadcom driver in Alpha which got fixed by a newer kernel so the wifi wasn't working because of that bug, no "airplane mode" switch or so as for https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=225115 - this was different bug that I've experienced a few Fedora versions ago - coincidentally, I happened to re-test this recently and I can no longer reproduce the problem in F17 as for https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=268990 - I see no real difference to 225115 ... it is something else than this report but ... even if the kernel update fixed the issue for me, I think there is still a problem in KNetworkManager which should be fixed (unless already done under another bug number) - the problem is that KNetworkManager should report an error message, if the connection fails, and that it should not allow to "activate" an interface which it cannot activate (note that activate != connect to a network) I'm not sure how to test this reliably (you won't fiddle with faulty kernel ...), but I believe that simply turning the wifi off, if the machine has the switch (which is not my case, unfortunately), should do the trick
I've got this switch on Lenovo Thinkpad T520 and when I switch it off, the "Enable wireless" selection becomes gray and can't be activated so as for this issue, it was fixed. I, however, don't know if it covers every problem in this report...
I think we should close this, we can reopen it if somebody can reproduce any of the issues raised here.