Wireless problem in Ubuntu 8.10 beta...

I decided to give it a shot tonight. I like the new installation interface and the ability to import from windows but.... My wireless anthena is turned off by default and my laptop's switch is Fn+F2....and it's not recognised by Ubuntu How can I turn it on?

 

Hello JCMS,

I would use your package manager and get ndiswrapper, else get it from sourceforge. Atleast thats what I am using currently.

 

With Intel 3945 built-in, you shouldn't have to need Ndiswrapper. This is a driver issue, not an issue with a missing driver, like with mauser's Broadcom wireless.

Please keep in mind that Ndiswrapper is considered as the ultimate last resort, as it sometimes causes problems instead of solving them. With Broadcom wireless, there is no choice, with Intel wireless from the last generation, there should be.

 

Ndiswrapper is already there and there's only my graphics card in it. My card is working. When I do hardware analysis it tells me it works and when I close Ubuntu I have wlan0 status report too. Also, when I reboot in windows, my anthena is off and I have to re-enable it

 

What? ndiswrapper is for wireless network cards. Ignore the second posters post about ndiswrapper. If you have a intel wifi nic and you should not have ndiswrapper installed.

About your wifi being off at boot we would need to know what model of notebook you have. Some have a button on the side that will turn off your wireless card to save power, some have a setting in the bios that will allow you to have wifi disabled by default.... in short more info is needed. Is it the one from your sig?

 

I too am having problems. I have a Dell XPS M1330 with preloaded Ubuntu. I received the laptop with 7.10. have since upgraded through 8.04 and am now at 8.10. I have never been able to get the wireless to work.

I assume you already saw this in the 8.10 release notes, but since it was not mentioned, here it is:

Cannot reactivate Intel 3945/4965 wireless if booting with killswitch enabled

On laptops with Intel 3945 or Intel 4965 wireless chipsets and a killswitch for the wireless antenna, starting the system with the killswitch enabled (i.e., with wireless disabled) will prevent re-enabling the wireless by toggling the killswitch. As a workaround, users should boot the system with the killswitch disabled. A future kernel update is expected to address this issue.

Hope that helps.

 

I just posted random off topic words.

 

Stupid Question:

You're sure there's not a hard switch somewhere, maybe a sliding switch on the front? Some notebooks (like mine) have both a hard and a soft switch. The fn combination is a soft switch, and I'm not sure it would qualify as a killswitch as far as this bug goes. A soft switch will send an ACPI event to request the operating system disable a radio, while a hard/killswitch will disable the radio at a lower level (BIOS, direct hardware) without OS interaction (although they should still send an ACPI event, I believe)

 

Yes, I was referring to the hardswitch located on the right side of the unit.

But this was not a stupid question. My first boss out of school told me something I have never forgotten. "90% of the time, its something simple". Nothing wrong with double checking.