[Dell Inspiron M4040] BIOS reports the wrong availability of bluetooth

[TienFu Chen]

The bluetooth is not installed, but "/sys/kernel/debug/dell_laptop/rfkill" says bluetooth is installed as below.

Such behavior can be observed on Dell Inspiron M4040(EN4-E3-A1)

While unit is under this issue, the bluetooth icon on the task panel will be grayed-out, and can't be turn on.

---------
status: 0x1031D
Bit 0 : Hardware switch supported: 1
Bit 1 : Wifi locator supported: 0
Bit 2 : Wifi is supported: 1
Bit 3 : Bluetooth is supported: 1
Bit 4 : WWAN is supported: 1
Bit 5 : Wireless keyboard supported: 0
Bit 8 : Wifi is installed: 1
Bit 9 : Bluetooth is installed: 1
Bit 10: WWAN is installed: 0
Bit 16: Hardware switch is on: 1
Bit 17: Wifi is blocked: 0
Bit 18: Bluetooth is blocked: 0
Bit 19: WWAN is blocked: 0

hwswitch_state: 0x7
Bit 0 : Wifi controlled by switch: 1
Bit 1 : Bluetooth controlled by switch: 1
Bit 2 : WWAN controlled by switch: 1
Bit 7 : Wireless switch config locked: 0
Bit 8 : Wifi locator enabled: 0
Bit 15: Wifi locator setting locked: 0
----------------

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: linux-image-2.6.38-11-generic-pae 2.6.38-11.48
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-11.48-generic-pae 2.6.38.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-11-generic-pae i686
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.23.
Architecture: i386
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 1: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: STAC92xx Analog [STAC92xx Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC1: ubuntu 1494 F.... pulseaudio
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Generic'/'HD-Audio Generic at 0xfeb44000 irq 42'
   Mixer name : 'ATI R6xx HDMI'
   Components : 'HDA:1002aa01,00aa0100,00100200'
   Controls : 4
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card0.Amixer.values:
 Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0
   Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
   Playback channels: Mono
   Mono: Playback [on]
Card1.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:1 'SB'/'HDA ATI SB at 0xfeb40000 irq 16'
   Mixer name : 'IDT 92HD87B1/3'
   Components : 'HDA:111d76d1,102804d0,00100205'
   Controls : 14
   Simple ctrls : 9
Date: Fri Aug 26 06:13:42 2011
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=44885a5b-08d8-41ff-9882-c2a0ffaa378d
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Inspiron M4040
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-11-generic-pae root=UUID=ece0dcb9-ae5d-425f-8f0b-935fcd7fb1e9 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
RelatedPackageVersions:
 linux-restricted-modules-2.6.38-11-generic-pae N/A
 linux-backports-modules-2.6.38-11-generic-pae N/A
 linux-firmware 1.52
SourcePackage: linux
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 06/22/2011
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: X20
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: X20
dmi.chassis.type: 8
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.chassis.version: Not Specified
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrX20:bd06/22/2011:svnDellInc.:pnInspironM4040:pvrNotSpecified:rvnDellInc.:rn:rvrX20:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvrNotSpecified:
dmi.product.name: Inspiron M4040
dmi.product.version: Not Specified
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[Alex Hung (alexhung)]

The driver that reports the status of the wireless devices finally calls to an BIOS SMI handler, which is a proprietary and a blackbox. This need to be fixed by BIOS.

However, clearing the bluetooth status (BIT 3 & BIT 9) in the "rfkill" driver does not fix the BT icon in task panel.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Tim Chen, as per http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/19/Product/inspiron-14-amd-m4040 an update is available for your BIOS (A05). If you update to this, does it change anything?

If not, could you please both specify what happened, and provide the output of the following terminal command:
sudo dmidecode -s bios-version && sudo dmidecode -s bios-release-date

Please note your current BIOS is already in the Bug Description, so posting this on the old BIOS would not be helpful.

Thank you for your understanding.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]