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Monday, July 11, 2011

Wifi (Wlan) on Acer Travelmate Timeline X 8172 Z – Ubuntu 11.04

After installing ubuntu 11.04 amd64 desktop on my Acer Timeline X 8172 Z there was no Wireless working.
 
sudo apt-get update                 – followed by
sudo apt-get upgrade              …wifi is still not available.

Jockey tells me, the proprietary STA driver is installed and active.  …still no wireless.

Load and unload the acer_wmi kernel module
sudo modprobe -v acer_wmi
sudo rmmod acer_wmi

After a reboot, the wireless LED was on, but still no wireless.

Setting up acer_wmi startup parameters:
echo “options acer_wmi wireless=1″ | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/acer_wmi.conf
Reboot.
BINGO: Wireless is working. …but you must not use the fn+F3 hotkey to turn off/on the wireless/bluetooth function. I will lead to a “system-freeze” that requires a hard reboot.
What causes the system-freeze? I do not know. Most people believe it is a Kernel bug in Linux-kernel 2.6.38. Because the system-freezes do not occur in the 2.6.39 mainline kernel.
I found another sollution:

Blacklisting the B43 system-device-driver with:
 
echo “blacklist brcm80211″ | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
…after a reboot I finally solved the wireless-problem!

The wifi-hotkey is working too:
After every reboot state is 1 (“options acer_wmi wireless=1″ ?! )
1: WLAN:on Bluetooth:off
2: WLAN:on Bluetooth:on
3: WLAN:off Bluetooth:on
4: WLAN:off Bluetooth:off
5: WLAN:off Bluetooth:on
6: WLAN:off Bluetooth:off

01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43225 802.11b/g/n (rev 01)

3 comments:

  1. Thanks, finally got 11.04 wireless working with your help.
    Does your 8172 continually have it's fan spinning at a higher/louder rate than windows?
    Have you found anyway to regulate fan speed?

    Thanks you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi,

    Tried to get Wifi to work as well, but did not succeed yet. Can you help?

    Use Ubuntu 11.04 kernel 2.6.38-10
    installed Broadcom STA driver.

    Orange light can be switched on and off with FN-F3. But no wireless. In syslog next lines appear

    Jul 29 21:25:12 bennie-TravelMate NetworkManager[787]: WiFi now enabled by radio killswitch
    Jul 29 21:25:12 bennie-TravelMate NetworkManager[787]: (eth1): bringing up device.
    Jul 29 21:25:12 bennie-TravelMate NetworkManager[787]: (eth1): supplicant interface state: starting -> ready
    Jul 29 21:25:12 bennie-TravelMate NetworkManager[787]: (eth1): device state change: 2 -> 3 (reason 42)
    Jul 29 21:25:12 bennie-TravelMate NetworkManager[787]: WiFi now disabled by radio killswitch
    Jul 29 21:25:12 bennie-TravelMate NetworkManager[787]: (eth1): device state change: 3 -> 2 (reason 0)
    Jul 29 21:25:12 bennie-TravelMate NetworkManager[787]: (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 0).
    Jul 29 21:25:12 bennie-TravelMate NetworkManager[787]: (eth1): taking down device.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Richard:
    Something is wrong. Your WiFi isn't connecting! "device state change: 2 -> 3 (reason 42)" looks good. Retry my "HowTo" after a fresh and clean install. And DO NOT touch the fn+F3 hotkey before you're done. That is IMPORTANT!
    Good luck.

    ReplyDelete