# HP 625 Wireless Connection Problems

## razvanz

Hi all,

I've bought a HP 625 laptop that has a Broadcom 4313 wireless adapter (it has draft n capabilities) and I'm trying to get the wireless network to run in Gentoo linux.

I connect to the Internet through a Linksys E2000 router.

In windows the wireless connection works perfectly. In Gentoo on the other hand, I'm unable to connect to the router.

I'm using the wl driver (broadcom-sta) and I'm trying to use wicd for wireless network connections. I have installed wpa_supplicant and wireless-tools also.

iwconfig reports that the tx power for the card is off. 

I've tried to enable it by running iwconfig eth1 txpower on, but it doesn't do anything (I think the laptop has a hardware rf kill switch). The tx power is still off.

Can somebody help me?

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## chithanh

The rfkill switch can be toggled via /sys/class/rfkill controls. You kernel usually needs RFKILL and a vendor specific WMI or ACPI driver for that.

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## razvanz

I have installed rfkill and I've added the HP_WMI module to the kernel, but I'm still unable to activate the rf kill switch.

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## chithanh

Can you be more specific? What happens if you activate the wifi rfkill through the /sys control (make sure you get the correct one), error message or nothing happens or the state will change temporarily then revert back?

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## razvanz

How can I activate the rf switch using the /sys control? I was trying to activate the rf switch using the button on the keyboard.

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## chithanh

Good that you are asking.

The controls are in

/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill<number>/hard

/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill<number>/soft

If you cat that you will get 0=unblocked or 1=blocked. If hard is unblocked (this is sometimes done with a physical switch on the computer), echo 0 or 1 into soft to change the state.

For more details on rfkill, read /usr/src/linux/Documentation/rfkill.txt and /usr/src/linux/Documentation/ABI/stable/sysfs-class-rfkill

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## razvanz

When using cat /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/hard I get 1, when using cat /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/soft I get 0. So that means that the switch is software unblocked but hardware blocked.

As far as I've read, the file /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/hard is read only so it cannot be modified. I've tried to press the RF switch button on the keyboard (it has a led that changes its color when the RF antenna is deactivated/activated - orange/blue) but in Linux it doesn't change the color of the led (like in Windows) so I'm guessing that somehow Linux isn't aware of that button on the keyboard.

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## razvanz

I find it funny that I'm having so much trouble with the wireless network when this laptop came with a Linux distribution - SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 already installed, so the wireless network should be working in Linux.

Doesn't anyone have any more ideas?

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## razvanz

Today, when the laptop was booting in Gentoo and while it was running fsck on the root partition I observed that the led from the RF switch on the keyboard was lit up and I was able to turn it on/off using the rf kill swtich from the keyboard, but when the dbus service started the led turned orange (this means the rf switch is off) and the rf switch from the keyboard didn't work anymore.

I tried loading and unloading the module after the laptop had finished booting, but the led doesn't work anymore with dbus loaded.

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## razvanz

I've managed to enable the RF antenna for the wireless card (this was done by unloading the wired network card's driver module - it appears as this laptop cannot use both wired and wireless networks at the same time - if the wired network is enabled then I'm unable to power on the RF antenna (this also happens in windows)) and I'm able to search for wireless networks.

I have wpa_supplicant and wicd installed and though I see wireless networks I'm unable to connect to my wireless router. My router is set not to broadcast the essid for the wireless network and it's using a WPA2 Personal encryption for the wireless password. Wicd sees my wireless connection as <hidden> but when I click on the info button it shows that the encryption type is WEP which is wrong and when I try to connect to the wireless network it says bad password (although the password is correct). I've tried also tried to enable the essid broadcast on the router but it's the same thing: when pressing the info button it shows that the encryption is WEP instead of WPA2 and I'm unable to connect to the network with the same error: BAD password.

Does anyone have any ideas?

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