Very strange bug in Ubuntu (introduced in recent months' updates)

Question

I have been using my ThinkPad x200 with Ubuntu since I bought it several yeas ago, every time doing a clean install when switching versions instead of upgrading one on top of the other.

I have never had any issue with the hardware drivers, and Ubuntu, as usual, was quite pleasing.

However, few months ago (I do not recall when exactly that happened, perhaps during May or June this year) I have noticed that when I boot the system, the WiFi is not available, that is:

Hardware button is set to active
On top-right corner I see the BT icon, but not the WiFi icon
ifconfig / ip addr show the interface wlan0 is down

Bringing it up with ifconfig wlan0 up make no change. Plugging in a cable, "wakes up" networking and WiFi icon becomes available, as well as active and UP interface.

I wonder which logs shall I look at in order to start understanding the roots of this issue?

I could not grasp anything out of /var/log/syslog that will explain this.

This question should instead be filed as a bug report, and as such is off-topic, thanks! Instructions on filing a bug report are here. — Jorge Castro, Jul 23 '12 at 14:06

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 23 '12 at 05:12

3

This occurred to me also.

If you turn off the wifi and reboot then this problem occurs. The enable wireless get unchecked.

Use rfkill unblock all in such case to enable Wi-fi.

For me, this is better than pressing hardware button twice to bring up the wi-fi, as it was earlier.

answered Jul 23 '12 at 05:12

Web-E

21,418

in my case, neither pressing hardware button twice don't work, nor the rfkill unblock all you have suggested. – Tzury Bar Yochay Jul 23 '12 at 07:25
what is the output of rfkill list all in that state – Web-E Jul 23 '12 at 08:17
see my pate at https://gist.github.com/3163266 – Tzury Bar Yochay Jul 23 '12 at 12:06

Very strange bug in Ubuntu (introduced in recent months' updates)

1 Answers1