Linux Mint 11 "Device not ready"

[Bocaj1994]

Hey guys,

I recently bought a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 which came with Windows 7 Home, I soon got sick of that and wanted to try my luck with Linux. I have previously played around with Ubuntu, Debian and attempted Arch Linux but always got sick of it after a week and reformatted.

I downloaded the Linux Mint 11 64bit DVD .iso and installed it without a problem, but I can't connect to my wireless network. From what I can tell, my wireless NIC is being picked up and has the correct drivers installed and "sudo rfkill list" shows that it is not blocked. I have tried almost every solution I could find online with no luck and I have also tried multiple clean installs, the only thing I haven't done is update the kernel because I am absolutely clueless on that...

Can someone help me out here? I am more than happy to supply you with full details of whatever you need as long as you can list the command for me.

The offending NIC is "Broadcom Corporation Device 0537" and I have tried the STA drivers and the b43 fwcutter firmware.

Thanks

[nephilim]

Broadcom NICs and Atheros NICs are not 100% reliable on Linux (though they are 95% reliable) - This is my own experience btw.
Intel NICs are better supported.

Now the question is, when the device is hard wired in, are you able to go onto the package manager and look for wifi adaptor programs? They may be able to help.

[nephilim]

Also have you run the update manager? That might be able to get all of the relevant updates you need to get it going.

[Bocaj1994]

I will look for some WiFi programs now and yes I have ran multiple updates and have activated the Broadcom STA drivers that the "Additional drivers" program told me to do.

[Bocaj1994]

Nope, no WiFi programs.

[computer_expert]

my dell laptop (with a broadcom wireless card) requires the wireless to enabled in windows before it will start working under Linux (Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint Debian Edition are the distros I've tried). Have you tried disabling and enabling the Wifi in Windows then rebooting into Linux Mint?

[Bocaj1994]

Not dual booting, so I don't think it matters? But that sounds awfully strange...
If I tap the hardware FN wireless key it goes from "Wireless disabled" and flashes to "disconnected" or something or other for a second and seems like it's working and THEN to "Device not ready"

I really appreciate the help guys, as a I.T trainee I feel like I should have experience in more than one OS.

[computer_expert]

But that sounds awfully strange...

It does. When trying to get the wireless card working on my laptop for the first time, I seem to remember a post that basically said the firmware (or something like that) is loaded onto the wireless card before being enabled and allowing the OS to use it.

If you run 'sudo lshw' from the terminal, does it give you a model number for the wireless card (eg. Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g) ?

[Bocaj1994]

This? A quote doesn't count as 10char?!

*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Broadcom Corporation
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:09:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: ac:81:12:3e:1d:ca
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=5.100.82.38 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
resources: irq:19 memory:e1d00000-e1d03fff

[computer_expert]

If you go into restricted drivers, have you disabled the b43 driver and left the broadcom one enabled?

You may need to reboot the machine for the changes to take effect. also when you enable the STA driver, you need to be connected to the internet as some additional files will be downloaded.

(apologies for the slow reply, my net connection has been unreliable over the weekend)

[jinnantonnixx]

The wireless hardware switch is set to 'working' I trust? (We've all done this!)

Of all the things I find with Linux, wireless is something that just never gives me problems. My main machine is a HP laptop with Atheros, the other is a Pavillion with Broadcom; both work faultlessly with Ubuntu.

Not much comfort to you, of course, but I'd try a live CD (say, Ubuntu Natty) and just see if that sees the wireless.

[Bocaj1994]

Thanks for the help guys and yes I tried both of them multiple times, I actually swapped to Ubuntu to see if the problem was there aswell and the answer was sadly yes.
I posted on acouple of other forums aswell but for Ubuntu.

Apparently if the acer-wireless is detected and soft blocked even if you DON'T have an acer module then the wireless is blocked on all modules.

Solution here and my thread.

After fixing it in Ubuntu I promptly switched back to Linux Mint 11 *I like it better* applied the fix and bam, it worked perfect.

[computer_expert]

glad to hear you eventually got it working