[ubuntu-uk] Toshiba Satellite Wireless Lock-down?

[Dave Morley]

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On 11/07/13 00:12, James Tait wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Recently my wife's laptop has been experiencing some wireless
> issues - slow performance, drop-outs and the like.  We have
> numerous wireless-enabled devices in the house and although we have
> the occasional blip, none of the other devices seem to be affected
> to the same extent, so I figured it was probably related to the
> laptop itself and set about trying to figure out what the problem
> might be.
> 
> The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite L450-188 running Ubuntu 12.04
> with the LTS backport kernel from Raring.  The original wireless
> card in it is a Realtek RTL8191SE.  I tried replacing it with the
> Atheros-based card from my son's EeePC, but although the card was
> apparently recognised, and the ath5k module loaded, the card was
> disabled:
> 
> jtait at mothership:~$ rfkill list 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked:
> no Hard blocked: yes
> 
> rfkill unblock has no effect - no error, but the card remains hard 
> blocked.  The wireless key (Fn-F8) simply toggles the soft block,
> and the laptop has no hardware switch that I can see.  There's a
> setting in the BIOS that doesn't seem to have any effect.  So I
> picked up an Intel IWL4965AGN card on eBay for a couple of quid and
> tried that, but the result was the same:
> 
> jtait at mothership:~$ rfkill list 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked:
> no Hard blocked: yes
> 
> I've tried countless "solutions" on ubuntuforums and so on.  Is it 
> possible that Toshiba have decided to lock the laptop down to a 
> specific kind of wireless card?
> 
> JT
> 

Is it a uefi + secure booted laptop?  If so then it might be that the
hardware needs to be registered somehow in order to be valid.  Just
thinking out loud.

- -- 
You make it, I'll break it!

I love my job :)
http://www.ubuntu.com
http://www.canonical.com
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