iwlagn wifi never comes up after RF kill is disabled

[Matt Zimmerman]

The symptoms I see are very similar to bug 193970 but with a different wireless chipset. I can't tell whether it's the same problem or not, so I'm filing a separate bug as it's easier to merge them than to tear them apart.

If I turn off the (physical) RF kill switch after it has been on since boot, the LED never turns on and the card doesn't scan:

perseus:[~] sudo iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0 No scan results

Nothing is shown in dmesg from iwlagn when I turn off the kill switch, but other RF devices in the system change state, so I can see that it's working:

[ 1622.808097] usb 5-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
[ 1622.978959] usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1623.078159] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
[ 1623.079377] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for generic
[ 1623.080048] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
[ 1623.080054] usbserial: USB Serial Driver core
[ 1623.083579] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for Sierra USB modem
[ 1623.084636] sierra 5-1:1.0: Sierra USB modem converter detected
[ 1623.087396] usb 5-1: Sierra USB modem converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[ 1623.088828] usb 5-1: Sierra USB modem converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[ 1623.090216] usb 5-1: Sierra USB modem converter now attached to ttyUSB2
[ 1623.090927] usbcore: registered new interface driver sierra
[ 1623.090931] sierra: USB Driver for Sierra Wireless USB modems: v.1.3.2

Unloading and reloading the module gets it working, i.e. the LED turns on and scanning works:

perseus:[~] sudo modprobe -r iwlagn && sudo modprobe iwlagn
perseus:[~] sudo iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0 Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:1C:10:A3:02:15
[...lots of networks...]

Once I've done this, I can toggle the switch on, confirm no scan results, turn it back on, and get results again.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
Package: linux-image-2.6.27-5-generic 2.6.27-5.8 [modified: lib/modules/2.6.27-5-generic/modules.pcimap lib/modules/2.6.27-5-generic/modules.dep lib/modules/2.6.27-5-generic/modules.ieee1394map lib/modules/2.6.27-5-generic/modules.usbmap lib/modules/2.6.27-5-generic/modules.isapnpmap lib/modules/2.6.27-5-generic/modules.inputmap lib/modules/2.6.27-5-generic/modules.seriomap lib/modules/2.6.27-5-generic/modules.alias lib/modules/2.6.27-5-generic/modules.symbols]
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=305dde78-d20a-4248-aaf4-09447b7c5791 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=/home/username/bin:/usr/lib/ccache:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/games:/usr/lib/surfraw
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.27-5.8-generic
SourcePackage: linux

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

This worked fine in 8.04, so tagging as a regression. I don't recall whether it worked in 2.6.26 or not.

[Frits Jalvingh (fjalvingh)]

I have an Acer 9920 with an 4965 chipset. This machine has a kill switch which is a toggle and it defaults to ON (killed) always. I have the same problem: after booting the killswitch is always ON. Toggling it in 8.04 would enable the wireless properly. In 8.10 nothing happens. No state change is visible *at all* in dmesg. Unloading and reloading iwlagn causes wireless to become active.

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

Not just Hard/Soft kill switch.
Disabling wifi on NM 0.7, and then enabling it again, makes my card/NM not see any more networks, until reboot.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 08:28:16AM -0000, BUGabundo wrote:
> Not just Hard/Soft kill switch.
> Disabling wifi on NM 0.7, and then enabling it again, makes my card/NM not see any more networks, until reboot.

Sounds like a different problem.

--
 - mdz

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

I do not have the logs here with me, but the behaviour is just the same has the one mention by you.
But if you want to use this ticket just to track the hard switch, feel free to mark as invalid NM, and forget this comments.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 12:56:22PM -0000, BUGabundo wrote:
> I do not have the logs here with me, but the behaviour is just the same has the one mention by you.
> But if you want to use this ticket just to track the hard switch, feel free to mark as invalid NM, and forget this comments.

This bug is reproducible without network manager even running, so it cannot
be a bug in network manager.

--
 - mdz

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

driver bug. closing NM target.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.