Debian Problem Getting Wireless Going - SOLVED

[Martin109]

Does the laptop have a hardware wifi switch? Or a Fn-key wifi switch?

Yes, this Dell machine does have a hardware wi-fi switch.  I searched for this subject and found this post (albeit featuring Ubuntu) about a possibly similar issue.  The poster first just checked that the wi-fi switch was enabled:

"The hardware switch does not seem to change the state of the machine when I switch it on and off. As a result, the wifi networking does not work.
I have already verified that wifi is enabled in the BIOS."

but then further down posts again that he had misread the instruction:

"Well... I'm embarrassed to say that this was 'user error' once again. When I checked the BIOS I was looking to verify that wifi was enabled. I also saw that wifi was configured to be controlled by the hardware switch. Not thinking deeply enough about this I then thought it was configured correctly...
Turns out that since Ubuntu drivers are not able to read the switch state, then by changing the BIOS configuration so wifi is NOT enabled by the hardware switch, the hardware block was removed. Now everything is working as expected."

Following this, I have checked in the BIOS, and there are two sets of settings, 'Wireless Switch' and 'Wireless Device Enable'.

Code: [Select]

Wireless Switch

wwan [x]                                                                 wlan  [x]

wiGig [x]                                                                 Bluetooth [x]

This setting determines which wireless devices can be controlled by the Wireless Switch.
For Windows 8 systems, this is controlled by OS driver directly, so the setting here doesn't affect
the Wireless Switch behavior.


Code: [Select]

Wireless Device Enable

wwan [x]                                                             wlan/wiGig  [x]

Bluetooth [x]

These fields allow enabling/disabling of internal wireless devices.

The above shows the settings I found.

I then unchecked 'wlan' in the Wireless Switch settings (following what I think the poster did in the end), but this has not made a difference to the behaviour.

It feels as if we are getting close.  I suspect the final answer may be a combination of one of these BIOS switch settings and some setting in Network Manager, or am I being too optimistic?

Does "nmcli radio" show the wifi on?

Command nmcli radio gives:

Code: [Select]

WIFI-HW  WIFI     WWAN-HW  WWAN   
enabled  enabled  enabled  enabled

I repeated the Ubuntu poster's command rfkill list all, and got:

Code: [Select]

1: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
2: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
3: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
4: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no


[Martin109]

Command dmesg | grep wl

Code: [Select]

[    3.754141] wl: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[    3.754144] wl: module license 'MIXED/Proprietary' taints kernel.
[    3.801897] wl: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[    3.950301] wlan0: Broadcom BCM43b1 802.11 Hybrid Wireless Controller 6.30.223.271 (r587334)
[    3.981377] wl 0000:03:00.0 wlp3s0: renamed from wlan0
[    4.464437] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlp3s0: link is not ready


[Martin109]

Command lshw -class network

Code: [Select]

  *-network                 
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: Ethernet Connection I217-LM
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 19
       bus info: pci@0000:00:19.0
       logical name: eno1
       version: 04
       serial: ec:f4:bb:71:09:76
       size: 1Gbit/s
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=e1000e driverversion=3.2.6-k duplex=full firmware=0.13-3 ip=192.168.1.101 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=1Gbit/s
       resources: irq:26 memory:f7f00000-f7f1ffff memory:f7f3d000-f7f3dfff ioport:f080(size=32)
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
       vendor: Broadcom Limited
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: wlp3s0
       version: 03
       serial: b8:ee:65:58:79:89
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=6.30.223.271 (r587334) latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
       resources: irq:18 memory:f5e00000-f5e07fff memory:f5c00000-f5dfffff


[Martin109]

I seem to have sorted this!

While earlier trying to investigate, I had clearly introduced an error on the file /etc/dbus-1/system.d/wpa_supplicant.conf

Removed offending line(s), rebooted, and hey presto!

Thanks for all your help - I've learned a lot on the way.

It may be that changing the BIOS switch played a role, but I'm not going to tempt providence by experimenting further now that it's working!

[pcolbeck]

It may be that changing the BIOS switch played a role, but I'm not going to tempt providence by experimenting further now that it's working!

See that's why you don't work in IT. I wouldn't be able to resist going back and flipping that BIOS switch to see if it broke it again.

[Martin109]

It's the nightmare of two variables that gets me!