rfkill shows wrong status of wlan

I just tested it with

Linux mediondt 2.6.34-999-generic #201003311145 SMP Wed Mar 31 11:40:45 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux
from the mainline Ubuntu-kernerarchive

0: hci0: Bluetooth
 Soft blocked: no
 Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
 Soft blocked: no
 Hard blocked: yes

Should I do further tests to show that this failure exists in the newer kernels?

Please see also https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15679

Hi PeterLi65,

If you could also please test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

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Reopen Bug, more info!

Having exactly the same PC Desktop model from Medion, I can confirm this bug is still in Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04 LTS as its probably a kernel related issue from kernel 2.6.32 up to 3.2.x or upstream 3.4. I will try to continue the contact with upstream kernel bugzilla as Peter did.

The hardware does functions fine under ubuntu 9.10 with 2.6.31 like Peter mentions, although its "soft blocked" by rfkill, but doing "rfkill unblock all wifi" the wifi hardware works fine.

Possible fix in missing module?
Like mentioned by Peter in newer versions of ubuntu with kernel 2.6.32up rfkill notes "hard blocked" instead of "soft blocked", but there is something else thats different. Ubuntu 9.10 shows the module "input-polldev" as loaded and used by rt2x00lib and I googled that its used by rfkill.

rt2500usb 21152 0
rt2x00usb 11548 1 rt2500usb
rt2x00lib 29756 2 rt2500usb,rt2x00usb
led_class 4096 1 rt2x00lib
input_polldev 3716 1 rt2x00lib
mac80211 181140 2 rt2x00usb,rt2x00lib
cfg80211 93052 2 rt2x00lib,mac80211

The newer version of ubuntu/kernel don't use the module "input_polldev", maybe input_polldev read or forced a good state of software/hardware block or it is indeed a hardware bug(wifi device itself reporting the wrong status), but I still like to know a way to work around it.

On the desktop machine there is no "hardware button" to control the wifi adapter. I might only try windows with a driver from ralink itself instead of the OEM medion. But alot of people already mention that NDISwrapper works fine...

Thank you for taking the time to file a bug report on this issue.

However, given the number of bugs that the Kernel Team receives during any development cycle it is impossible for us to review them all. Therefore, we occasionally resort to using automated bots to request further testing. This is such a request.

We have noted that there is a newer version of the development kernel than the one you last tested when this issue was found. Please test again with the newer kernel and indicate in the bug if this issue still exists or not.

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 Thank you for your help, we really do appreciate it.

When the Ndiswrapper with the Ralink proprietary Windows Driver is used after removing the active module rt2500usb the device works (ofcourse using NDIS).

But when removing the ndiswrapper and its module, and modprobing the rt2500usb again "rfkill" will show soft and hard unblocked. Continuing that when doing:
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
sudo service network-manager stop/start

The device connects and functions fine with the rt2500usb driver, also shown in the connection info box of network-manager applet. It really doesn't use the ndis because there are no ndis modules loaded. So the kernel driver works fine, but there really is problem getting the right "hard blocked" state.

I cannot test the ndiswrapper on precise 12.04 because of this bug 986064, but in ubuntu 11.10 ndiswrapper did succesfully hard unblock somehow the rfkill state described in comment #7.

Closing this bug with Won't fix as this kernel / release is no longer supported.
Please feel free to open a new bug report if you're still experiencing this on a newer release (Bionic 18.04.3 / Disco 19.04)
Thanks!