Frustrating wireless problem, Broadcom wireless

[BobNutfield]

Hello Everyone,

I thought I had encountered every kind of problem working with wireless, but this is a new one for me.

I installed F13 on an Acer laptop for a friend who is just beginning with Linux. This laptop has the dreaded Broadcom chipset and is using the b43 driver. When it was first installed, wireless was automatically detected and worked fine. However, as usual, there was about 200MB of updates after the install, and the wireless was downloading extremely slowly, so I connected eth0 just to complete the updates. Ever since, the wireless will not work. When the machine is booted, wireless is shown as disabled in Network Manager. I remembered that there was a wireless switch on the front of the laptop and switching it on allows me to check the enable wireless box, but wireless says device not ready.

ifconfig wlan0 up returns:

SIOCSFFLAGS: Operation not possible due to RF-kill

I assumed this meant that the switch was in OFF position, but it is not. iwconfig shows the wireless is detected.

Anyone have a clue was it going on with this?

Thanks for any replies.

Bob

---------- Post added at 09:16 PM CDT ---------- Previous post was at 08:08 PM CDT ----------

After doing some more research, it appears that there is a file which is keeping the rf_kill switch set to off. I cannot seem to find this file and if anyone knows where it is in Fedora, I would appreciate the tip.

Thanks

Bob

[stoat]

http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=249577

[BobNutfield]

Thank you, stoat, that solved the RF-kill issue. Funny, I did thoroughly search the net and two forums and nothing about these commands. Anyway, thank you. A re-boot solved it.

Bob