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In 32-bit Lucid Lynx I was able to get the broadcom BCM4212 wireless
working with the proprietary driver that I installed. There is however a
very annoying bug related to the wireless switch on this Dell Vostro
1320 and I am not sure if it is related to the switch itself, with the
wireless driver or with network-manager. What happens is the following:

Whenever the computer is turned on (or returning from suspend/hibernate)
the current position of the wireless switch is recognized by network-
manager (or kernel, don´t know where this is detected) as being in
disabled mode. This is fine if that's in fact the position of the switch
is actually disabled as enabling it will turn on the hardware (blue
wireless light comes on) and network-manager will identify it as active
automatically enabling wireless (unless I deactivate it there of course)
allowing we to connect. If the switch is actually in the "on" position
when the computer is turned on (which it will be most of the time) the
blue wireless light is on and seemingly working while network-manager
recognizes it as being off and grays out the option of activating
wireless. Flipping the switch now will cause network-manager to think it
is on (and so it "activates" wireless) but at the same time the hardware
is actually turned off (blue light goes off as well) so no networks are
ever found.

This is really annoying since I always have to reboot/suspend all the
time to be able to use wireless. It is even more frustrating because the
computer is not mine (I am just configuring it for a complete
linux/ubuntu newbie) and my friend is waiting for a fully functional
ubuntu.

I should also mention that the the switch works as it should in Windows
Vista (it's a dual-boot configuration).

Trying the behavior from a live-usb (lucid) gives the same results even
before activating the proprietary driver (which leads me to believe the
problem is not with the driver itself).

I checked /var/log/messages and /var/log/kernel and didn´t see any
entries when flipping the switch so I do not know if the problem is with
network-manager or with the kernel and I also don´t know which log
files/command outputs I should include/look into to further troubleshoot
but let me know which ones are valid and I´ll include them right away.

Short of a solution, any workaround would be very welcome. Such as
fooling kernel/network-manager that wireless switch is always on etc.

Kristofer

** Affects: xorg-server (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: 1320 broadcom switch vostro wireless
-- 
Wireless switch position not properly detected
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bugs/588366
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