Return-path: Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:34515 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750956Ab3DOQcf (ORCPT ); Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:32:35 -0400 Message-ID: <1366043660.5649.4.camel@dcbw.foobar.com> (sfid-20130415_183239_483404_72345C65) Subject: Re: Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN rfkill always Soft blocked From: Dan Williams To: schwaahed Cc: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:34:20 -0500 In-Reply-To: References: <1365804259.10342.20.camel@dcbw.foobar.com> <1366032132.8361.19.camel@jlt4.sipsolutions.net> <1366036772.2404.3.camel@dcbw.foobar.com> <1366039892.8361.29.camel@jlt4.sipsolutions.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Mon, 2013-04-15 at 11:50 -0400, schwaahed wrote: > So I configured a kernel with hp-wmi enabled. It had the unfortunate > consequence of disabling wireless on the windows side. I also saw that > some people with different hardware from me were able to resolve their > problem by blacklisting hp-wmi. Ok, so that means that perhaps the airplane mode interface changed on your machine from earlier models in the Elitebook series. You'll need to talk to the hp-wmi maintainers about how to handle your device then, at this point it's not a wifi issue, it's the BIOS telling the wifi hardware to enable/disable itself and that's causing your issues when trying to unblock stuff. > rfkill show an additional wifi interface ('hp-wifi' I think), that > behaves exactly as phy0 did. I still am unable to unblock this > interface. phy0 doesn't respond to any rfkill commands or the physical > wifi switch. It is just remains soft and hard blocked. Yeah, kernel driver issue for hp-wmi, of if HP isn't using WMI anymore then a different module. One question though, any idea if your laptop uses UEFI instead of traditional BIOS? > Dan -- Are there any links/search terms to older conversations on this issue? Not your specific issue that I know of, but the rfkill + BIOS interaction issue has been going on for years; every time the OEMs change the way BIOS talks to the OS and the wifi card, we need a kernel update of the various laptop drivers like acer-wmi, hp-wmi, thinkpad-acpi, etc to handle it. > Is wifi working on your 2530p? Yeah, but it's probably not relevant for your machine, since the 2530p is from 2009. HP has likely changed the BIOS <-> OS interface since then. Dan > Thanks > - Darwin > > On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 11:31 AM, Johannes Berg > wrote: > > On Mon, 2013-04-15 at 09:39 -0500, Dan Williams wrote: > > > >> > Yeah it seems not loaded, but how then does the soft block affect hard > >> > block? All very odd, but almost certainly a platform rather than a wifi > >> > issue. > >> > >> On my 2530p and a lot of other laptops, blocking the BIOS > >> "switch" (either physically or softblock) hardblocks phy0. I guess the > >> BIOS twiddles a GPIO that's connected to the mPCI-E module's rfkill > >> line/GPIO? > > > > Yes, that seems to be the case. Something does, anyway, as the GPIO > > state is pretty much directly reflected in the hard kill of the "phy0" > > device. > > > >> Which leads to the problem we've talked about a long time ago; you can't > >> treat phy0 hardblock as a physical block that cannot be soft-unblocked, > >> because some other switch might actually control it's state. We tried > >> to gray-out the "Enable Wireless" when hardblocked (since logically you > >> can't soft-unblock something that's hardblocked), but it turns out you > >> can't do that because unblocking BIOS switches might un-hardblock the > >> phy0 wifi switch... (and the kernel doesn't describe these > >> dependencies, because, well, that's laptop-specific and would never be > >> up-to-date). > > > > Yeah ... best thing you could do is assume that if a bios rfkill exists > > it controls the phy0 hard kill and in case it doesn't enable when you > > unblock the bios device you pop up a message saying to switch the > > physical button? > > > > johannes > > > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html