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I recently installed Unbuntu 20.04 on an old laptop and am unable to get wifi working.

The laptop has a Ralink RT3090 wifi card, which as far as I can see should be supported:

lspci -knn | grep Net -A3

02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Ralink corp. RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe [1814:3090]
            Subsystem: Lenovo RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe [17aa:f101]
            Kernel driver in use: rt2800pci 
            Kernel modules: rt2800pci

nmcli show the wireless adapter as sw disabled but the hw enabled:-

nmcli
wlp2s0: unavailable
        "Ralink RT3090 1T/1R"
        wifi (rt2800pci), 64:27:37:1D:40:83, sw disabled, hw, mtu 1500

nmcli radio
WIFI-HW  WIFI      WWAN-HW  WWAN

enabled  disabled  enabled  enabled

But checking with rfkill says it is hardware blocked

rfkill
ID TYPE DEVICE            SOFT      HARD
 0 wlan ideapad_wlan unblocked unblocked
 1 wlan phy0         unblocked   blocked

Attempting to unblock the card with rfkill makes no difference.

Wifi is enabled in the BIOS and the card works fine if windows is reinstalled on the laptop.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what is going on?

Diagnostic info

https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/sQjXfSK2zY/

Cat
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    "Attempting to unblock the card with rfkill makes no difference." Please try unblocking with the physical switch or key combination on the laptop. Welcome to Ask Ubuntu. – chili555 Oct 05 '20 at 14:00
  • Thanks for the response. I've tried this and it doesn't fix the problem, if anything it makes it worse. It's a key combination (+). Pressing this once apparently disables wifi (according to the on screen message) pressing it again enables wifi, allegedly. Having disabled/enabled using the physical key combination nmcli shows both the hw and sw disabled:- wlp2s0: unavailable "Ralink RT3090 1T/1R" wifi (rt2800pci), 64:27:37:1D:40:83, sw disabled, hw disabled, hw, mtu – Cat Oct 05 '20 at 15:01
  • When you click the Network Manager icon and select Settings > WiFi, is Airplane Mode off? – chili555 Oct 05 '20 at 15:36
  • Airplane mode is off. The WiFi settings state "No Wi-Fi Adapter Found. Make sure you have a Wi-Fi adapter plugged in and turned on" – Cat Oct 05 '20 at 16:03
  • You clearly have a wifi adapter in place: "Ralink RT3090 1T/1R" and it has an interface: wlp2s0. Something else is wrong. Please provide the diagnostic script from here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/425155/my-wireless-wifi-connection-does-not-work-what-information-is-needed-to-diagnos/425180#425180 – chili555 Oct 05 '20 at 20:36
  • Link to requested data hopefully added to original post - thanks – Cat Oct 06 '20 at 11:55
  • I had the same problem with a broadcom wifi card. Checking my architecture is a "x86_64" and is more compatible with a 32 bit version. I tried with linux mint 19 and everything ok. I just have to accept the proprietary software. – MiguelP Jun 07 '23 at 04:28
  • This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. To get notified when this question gets new answers, you can follow this question. Once you have enough reputation, you can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question. - From Review – richbl Jun 08 '23 at 02:59

1 Answers1

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In your wireless_info, we still see that the wireless is hard(ware) blocked. We also see a likely cause.

Please try:

sudo modprobe -r ideapad_laptop

Does your wireless come to life?

If you wish to make it permanent, blacklist the module so that it never loads at all:

sudo -i 
echo "blacklist ideapad_laptop"  >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf 
exit

Further details: ideapad_laptop module makes iwlwifi stop working

chili555
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  • Tired this but no joy. Removing the module doesn't activate the wifi but does result in the laptop going into "aeroplane mode". Blacklisting the module and rebooting has the same effect - no wifi and laptop is in "aeroplane mode". There is no way to take laptop out of "aeroplane mode" as removing the module disables the hardware key functions to stop start aeroplane mode etc. – Cat Oct 06 '20 at 20:28
  • If the hard block cannot be reoved with the rfkill command, nor by manipulating the key combination nor by removing ideapad-laptop, then I regret that I haven't any other suggestions. Sorry. – chili555 Oct 07 '20 at 01:34