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Wireless Switch
Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 5:26 pm
by sdfgeoff
Well, I bought a HP Envy m6 recently, with it's shop-provided copy of windows 8.
Since then, I've dual-booted ubuntu on it. But I have a problem.
After several hours of playing, I got the laptop to recognize that it had a wireless card, but I haven't managed to get it to find the button (fn+f12) that toggles it on and off.
What this means is that the wifi card is there, but off, and no way to turn it on.
Any bright ideas?
I've checked rfkill, and it's not soft-blocked, but it is hard-blocked.
(Interestingly, Arch managed to avoid this somehow, when I tried it in live-mode. It found and used the card fine. I'll switch if I have to, but don't really want to)
Re: Wireless Switch
Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2013 6:12 pm
by snoopy
I think the hotkey and enabling the card are separate issues. I'm pretty sure the enabling/disabling is handled in software even in windows; it's just integrated in the driver so you don't realize. In Linux, I'd expect the two portions of the functionality (the hotkey, and enabling/disabling the card) to be separated and not automatically joined.
For the hotkey - there are hotkey utilities out there that will allow you to bind your hotleys to commands - as far as I know, that's how they are typically handled in Linux (Gnome/Nautilus may have some hotkey capabilities built in?)
As for enabling the card: The driver probably has a control for it. I'd do some Googleing for setup info on the specific wireless device. There's probably an appropriate config. setting and/or command you can run upon boot to enable the card. Also, see about Ubuntu's network control solution, to see what you need to do with that.
Re: Wireless Switch
Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 4:28 am
by BUBBALOU
New hp's the hot keys are on by default
Fn + f12 = f12
F12 = enable disable hot key
Re: Wireless Switch
Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 5:50 pm
by sdfgeoff
Actually, I changed that in the bios so it was fn+f12.
I tried it both ways, but it didn't change a thing.
I'm making progress though (I think)
Re: Wireless Switch
Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 6:21 pm
by snoopy
Make sure to fill us in!
Re: Wireless Switch
Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 7:44 pm
by BUBBALOU
Did you uninstall the hp wireless button driver helper utility, if so verify the WLAN configuration utility service is reactivated for windows under services (used to be called wireless zero under Xp)
Re: Wireless Switch
Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:32 am
by sdfgeoff
Um, It's running ubuntu currently. Everything's working under windows!
I've got it to be enabled, by compiling the driver according to
here and updating the kernel to 3.7 (. something else, I don't remember)
Then I blacklisted the rt2800 module, and added the rt3920 to the startup list. (My device is a realtek 3920)
Now the device is recognized, but in ifconfig it shows up as 'ra0' and nm-applet doesn't know about it.
So I'm now trying to find out how to either change the name or make a dummy device that points at it.
Re: Wireless Switch
Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 1:20 am
by Jeff250
If you don't want to switch distros and if your HP lets you upgrade your wireless, you can upgrade to something that works well with Ubuntu. This is a good lesson on why you should do research before buying hardware if you use linux.