Comment 0 for bug 588366

In 32-bit Lucid Lynx I was able to get the broadcom BCM4212 wireless working with the proprietary driver that I installed. There is however a very annoying bug related to the wireless switch on this Dell Vostro 1320 and I am not sure if it is related to the switch itself, with the wireless driver or with network-manager. What happens is the following:

Whenever the computer is turned on (or returning from suspend/hibernate) the current position of the wireless switch is recognized by network-manager (or kernel, don´t know where this is detected) as being in disabled mode. This is fine if that's in fact the position of the switch is actually disabled as enabling it will turn on the hardware (blue wireless light comes on) and network-manager will identify it as active automatically enabling wireless (unless I deactivate it there of course) allowing we to connect. If the switch is actually in the "on" position when the computer is turned on (which it will be most of the time) the blue wireless light is on and seemingly working while network-manager recognizes it as being off and grays out the option of activating wireless. Flipping the switch now will cause network-manager to think it is on (and so it "activates" wireless) but at the same time the hardware is actually turned off (blue light goes off as well) so no networks are ever found.

This is really annoying since I always have to reboot/suspend all the time to be able to use wireless. It is even more frustrating because the computer is not mine (I am just configuring it for a complete linux/ubuntu newbie) and my friend is waiting for a fully functional ubuntu.

I should also mention that the the switch works as it should in Windows Vista (it's a dual-boot configuration).

Trying the behavior from a live-usb (lucid) gives the same results even before activating the proprietary driver (which leads me to believe the problem is not with the driver itself).

I checked /var/log/messages and /var/log/kernel and didn´t see any entries when flipping the switch so I do not know if the problem is with network-manager or with the kernel and I also don´t know which log files/command outputs I should include/look into to further troubleshoot but let me know which ones are valid and I´ll include them right away.

Short of a solution, any workaround would be very welcome. Such as fooling kernel/network-manager that wireless switch is always on etc.

Kristofer