Hi. I have an HP G60-249WM laptop, and am currently using squeeze for
better wireless support. (The latest kernel from backports might also
work; but after trying that, I can say it doesn't play well with the
non-free nvidia driver, which I also need.)
After "upgrading" to squeeze, and updating my firewall rules, the
wireless was working at first. But while browsing the web a couple days
ago, network-manager repeatedly prompted me for my wireless password,
and would not accept the correct one. Then I tried unchecking "Enable
Wireless", hoping to re-check it later, but it went gray (disabled)!
After asking some questions and being given suggestions on #debian, and
searching the web (with my wired connection) for answers, I installed
the lshw and rfkill packages and found the following:
# lshw -C network
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
...
*-network DISABLED
description: Wireless interface
product: AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:07:00.0
logical name: wlan0
version: 01
serial: [MAC address]
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet
physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath5k latency=0 multicast=yes
wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
resources: irq:23 memory:c2000000-c200ffff
# rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
If I have read the top Google result for rfkill [1] correctly, this
means that the problem cannot be fixed by *any* software, and is thus a
hardware issue. Is that right?
Assuming it is hardware, I have noticed that there is a button with a
little wireless logo LED. Before I "upgraded" to squeeze, it was always
amber-colored. Afterward, it was usually blue, but blinked between both
colors while I was browsing the web. Now it is always blue.
I have tried pushing this button once, briefly; several times, quickly;
and holding it down for 30 seconds. I have also tried every Fn-FXX key
combo from F1 to F12, and some combinations of these with the wireless
button. No change.
I have also tried the Ubuntu LiveCD; it seems to have the same problem.
And I've tried removing network-manager, manual configuration and
ifdown/modprobe/ifup, and the alternative manager wicd. None worked.
For additional reference, here's the information provided by ifconfig -a
and iwconfig:
# ifconfig -a
...
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr [MAC address]
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
# iwconfig
...
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=off
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
So, is my wireless card fried? Or what other information is needed to
know?
[1] http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/rfkill.txt