Wireless shows up as disabled, how can I get it working?

Question

$ sudo iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=0 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off

pan0      no wireless extensions.

$

This is what pops up when I click the two computers icon

alt text

Wired Network: disconnected
Wireless Networks: device not ready

What should I do to get Wifi working on this machine?

$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory
$
$ lspci | tail
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M92 LP [Mobility Radeon HD 4300 Series]
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)
$

The Broadcom driver was missing, it works now, thanks everyone. — Lazer, Oct 29 '10 at 18:14
I have this error still in 2024. I spent an hour on research and tests, to no avail. I had to reboot in the end. lspci | tail shows 01:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 3165 (rev 91). — questionto42, Jan 09 '24 at 18:42

score 8 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 14 '24 at 12:09

8

It is likely that the network-manager state got corrupted. Open the file /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state. It should look something like this:

[main]
NetworkingEnabled=true
WirelessEnabled=true
WWANEnabled=false

Change any from 'false' to 'true' to re-enable networking:

[main]
NetworkingEnabled=true
WirelessEnabled=true
WWANEnabled=true

It may work better if you first stop NetworkManager:

sudo service network-manager stop

Or:

sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager

And start it again once done:

sudo service network-manager start

Or:

sudo systemctl start NetworkManager

If that does not help, reboot.

This happened occasionally after wakeup in Lucid. In Maverick this should be fixed.

edited Jan 14 '24 at 12:09

questionto42

244

answered Oct 27 '10 at 20:37

txwikinger

28,462

all the states were already set to true. disabling and restarting has no effect. – Lazer Oct 28 '10 at 05:04
In this case, try to remove and re-insert the wireless kernel module with rmmod and modprobe. – txwikinger Oct 28 '10 at 13:09
What is the module name? – Lazer Oct 29 '10 at 17:00
This depends on your wifi card. In my case it is iwl4935, I believe. – txwikinger Oct 29 '10 at 20:13
Network manager can also be restarted with sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager which in my case looks to be just another reason to thank systemd for fscking linux up and one more good reason to get rid of it – Underverse Jan 14 '17 at 22:20
lspci | tail shows, among others: 01:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 3165 (rev 91). Even after changing that NetworkManager.state to WWANEnabled=true (works only with sudo su rights) and also stopping before and starting after changing, it did not work. Yet, the `false' entry was there. It now remains true. Some first good step to go on with. – questionto42 Jan 09 '24 at 17:38

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 27 '10 at 21:09

5

Try this:

Install rfkill -> sudo apt-get install rfkill
Give this command in terminal -> rfkill unblock all

Your wireless will work instantly, I hope. I guess you have a Intel wireless card and an Hp laptop, one of them at least.

answered Oct 27 '10 at 21:09

skalka

1,555

rfkill unblock all does not change anything. I think it is already enabled, but not able to search for the network. I am able to connect to the network using Vista on the same machine though. – Lazer Oct 28 '10 at 05:05
Can you tell me which card is? – skalka Oct 28 '10 at 07:58
1

I have this problem on lucid, and this works for me, but the unblock all command only works when I disable wireless on my laptop first (I've got a hardware switch). So I switch it off, run sudo rfkill unblock all, then switch it on, and it works every time for me. (Dell Inspiron 1420n) – user1477 Oct 30 '10 at 21:19

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 29 '10 at 07:07

On my Acer 3500 running ubuntu 10.10 the wireless suddenly stopped working after a screwy suspend/hibernation/power-off event. No amount of reboots would renable it. rfkill said the wireless was turned off at the switch, though the light indicating the wireless card is turned on remained on. rfkill unblock all had no effect.

$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes

Network manager indicator said "wireless disabled" instead of "device not ready" as in the question. It was greyed out and not possible to change it to enabled. After a couple hours of troubleshooting and research I finally discovered the solution (for me):

sudo rm /dev/rfkill && sudo reboot

Kudos to Philip K. Adetiloye for taking the time to write about in Ubuntu Wireless disabled: SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted. (The error message refers to the output of sudo ifconfig wlan0 up when /dev/rfkill is in the broken state.)

sudo rm /dev/rfkill This worked great for me, thanks! – Ronshere Oct 06 '13 at 05:09 — Ronshere, Oct 06 '13 at 05:09

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 19 '14 at 00:06

2

Try pressing any buttons on your keyboard that you're not sure what they do.
I was getting the Hard blocked and look for a wifi switch; didn't see one. Turns out when Ubuntu set-up the keyboard they assigned a button near the bottom of my screen as the wifi button.

edited Oct 19 '14 at 00:06

Volker Siegel

13,065
5
49
65

answered Oct 18 '14 at 23:34

WiteRabbit

21
1

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 21 '11 at 04:20

Check this one out. It's for BROADCOM CARDS ONLY This worked for me. The button wouldn't work at all, and it wouldn't detect any wireless networks... But I did this, and rebooted, and it works perfectly.

http://techie-buzz.com/foss/wifi-ubuntu-install-broadcom-drivers.html

You might have to mess with the terminal commands, depending on where you put the downloaded files. I kept them all in my "Downloads" folder.

My commands ended up looking like the ones below

sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware '/home/tsarprodigy/Downloads/wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o'

Then

tar xfvj /home/tsarprodigy/Downloads/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2'

And finally,

sudo b43-fwcutter --unsupported -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta_mimo.o

Now all you have to do is restart and it should work just fine!

You're welcome, and thanks for reading...

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 26 '12 at 05:36

2

I did rfkill list and it should no for soft and hard blocks. I still ran rfkill unblock wifi and I was able to see networks again. It has happened to me for the last 2 distros in this manner.

HP DV9000 Laptop

answered Jan 26 '12 at 05:36

Spartan

21
1

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 27 '10 at 20:44

1

I had this (or similar) issue in Ubuntu 10.04. For me, right clicking the network-manager status icon (the two computers), and selecting "Enable wireless" solved the problem for that session.

I had to do this every time I started the machine, though, the solution was workable for me. I never cared to investigate further.

answered Oct 27 '10 at 20:44

elzapp

2,090

that checkbox is already enabled. – Lazer Oct 28 '10 at 05:03

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 15 '11 at 15:39

I had a very similar if not the exact same problem. It seems to be that the WiFi button (rfkill hard block) is not syncing with the rfkill soft block. I had this problem since an Ubuntu update just before Christmas. Before it worked perfectly.

I solved the issue by making sure the hard and soft block are both set to no. You can check this by running rfkill list all in a terminal.

The hard block you can change by pressing your laptop's WiFi button
The soft block you can override by entering rfkill unblock wifi

Check with rfkill list all if both values are set to no and your wireless should work again.

If you still have problems I have written up a bit more detailed blog post.

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 27 '10 at 23:17

0

I've seen this happen sometimes, and just right-clicking on the Network Manager applet and re-checking "Enable Wireless" (and/or "Enable Networking") has solved it for me in the past.

answered Oct 27 '10 at 23:17

Kees Cook

17,473

Wireless shows up as disabled, how can I get it working?

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