"Enable Wireless" is gray on ubuntu 11.10 (Dell Vostro 1520)

[James Tappin]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:10:18 -0600
Peng Yu <pengyu.ut at gmail.com> wrote:

PY> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Mark Paskal <markpaskal at gmail.com>
PY> wrote:
PY> > If it doesn't work after a restart of the machine, you should open
PY> > System Settings via the cog menu on the top right and select
PY> > 'Additional Drivers.' Assuming we have similar dells you should
PY> > have an option in there for the broadcom-sta driver, which you can
PY> > select and click 'Activate.'
PY> 
PY> It was already enabled.
PY> 
PY> The problem must be due to some other factors.
PY> 

It sounds like the card is hard blocked. To check this, run:
rfkill list

The Hard blocked state ought to be toggled by the hardware switch (or
Fn-<key> combination). I've not seen this fail in *buntu, but I do see
the same issue with an Intel wifi card when running Pardus.
Unfortunately I don't know of a way to fix the problem if the switch
doesn't do the job. (Possibly with Broadcom you need to change to the
legacy driver or from it).

-- 
+------------------------+-------------------------------+---------+
| James Tappin           | School of Physics & Astronomy |  O__    |
| sjt at star.sr.bham.ac.uk | University of Birmingham      | --  \/` |
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