Re: wifi disappeared completely last night on a Debina Jessie laptop.
On Mon, 10 Jun 2013 09:59:35 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Lu, 10 iun 13, 04:04:41, Hendrik Boom wrote:
>>
>> I think -- maybe I should ask it to shut down wifi altogether (using
>> the network manager's menu, and then ask it to turn it on again. Maybe
>> then it will rescan.
>
> Yes, it will.
>
>> But instead, after turning it off, the item has vanished from the menu,
>> and I can find no way to get it back.
>
> What item from which menu? I'm assuming you mean the "Enable Wi-Fi" item
> in the nm-applet right-click menu.
Yes, that was the item. It should not disappear.
>
> [snip]
>
>> It looks as if somewhere Linux has got the idea that wifi is supposed
>> to be off, and upon boot it tells the BIOS to disable the WLAN device.
>> And then the network manager thinks I don't have a wifi device and
>> refuses to give me any options to turn it on again.
>
> As far as I recall Network Manager is using rfkill to disable the
> WiFi[1]. See if the command 'rfkill' helps.
rfkill worked. I first had to install it. Good thing I still had a
wired ethernet socket on the machine.
> [1] this generally is not such a bad idea, because it will save power.
It would be a much better idea if it didn't abrogate the possibility of
turning it on again. Technically, I suppose the possibility is still
there, becaus I could use rfkill. But switching from a menu to a unknown
root-level shell command is a terrible user interface.
-- hendrik
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