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The laptop is: SONY VAIO VGN-CR490

The adapter is: TP-LINK Archer T2U AC600 v3

It is recognized:

rfkill list all

mike@mike-VGN-CR490E:~$ rfkill list all
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes
1: phy1: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

rfkill unblock all or rfkill unblock wifi is not helping.

The menu says USB WiFi hardware disabled

The problem is that my PCI board is kinda broken and always stays at WIRELESS OFF If I switch it ON (I have to hold it at position ON) both WiFi's (PCI and USB) is going to work.

So I need USB adapter to be kinda independent from hardware switch. How can I do that?

There’s no hard nor soft blocks on the USB adapter. But it still doesn’t work as long as hardware switch is at OFF

iwconfig shows 2 devices (one PCI and one USB obviously).

Using ifconfig PCI-wifi up gives an error SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not possible due to RF-kill

Using ifconfig USB-wifi up gives nothing USB WiFi remains off.

Mike K.
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1 Answers1

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It is sorted. Sorta big adventure, but I did it. Based on this: How do I fix a "Wireless is disabled by hardware switch" error?

And we need WICD for that. The manual to install WICD on Ubuntu 20.04 I found over here: How to install WICD on ubuntu 20.04?

So step by step: Installing WICD (maybe available somewhere else, but I used this way via terminal):

mkdir -p ~/Downloads/wicd
cd ~/Downloads/wicd

wget http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/p/pygtk/python-gtk2_2.24.0-6_amd64.deb
wget http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/p/pygtk/python-glade2_2.24.0-6_amd64.deb


wget http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/w/wicd/python-wicd_1.7.4+tb2-6_all.deb
wget http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/w/wicd/wicd-daemon_1.7.4+tb2-6_all.deb
wget http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/w/wicd/wicd-gtk_1.7.4+tb2-6_all.deb


sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ./.deb
sudo apt-get install ./.deb # second time for correct configuration

And then I uninstalled default network manager since it's not working and just messing around. And WICD does the job just fine.

sudo apt-get remove --purge network-manager-gnome network-manager

Once again: my issue was that the hardware switch (WIRELESS ON/OFF) is broken (always OFF) and was disabling my USB WiFi Adapter. And to bypass this I have to use WICD.

Mike K.
  • 254