The Intel Centrino Wireless N card is on the Dell N4010 and some other laptops. In this case it was the N4010 that a buddy of mine had which gave him the trouble. It’s a compatible card, but needs some nudging to get it to work.
The N4010 also has a software kill button in the form of the F2 key. Bear that in mind when using this machine.
Start by installing rfkill:
sudo apt-get install rfkill
Now check the status of the card:
sudo rfkill list
You should get output similar to the following:
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: no 1: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: yes
Take a look at dell-wifi‘s Hard blocked status. If it’s yes, your card is disabled via the F2-keys kill function. Hit the F2 key and do…
sudo rfkill list
…again. Your output should now resemble the above.
Now unblock by doing the following:
sudo rfkill unblock all sudo rfkill list
Your output should now look like the following:
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no
Your card should now work normally. Now check the connection manager for wireless networks. Reboot and verify you still have connectivity.
4 comments
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Sylviux
November 11, 2011 at 6:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hello,
the command “sudo rfkill list” shows no everywhere, so nothing is blocked.
But the task bar still says “device not ready”
Sylviux
November 11, 2011 at 6:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sorry
so the task bar still says “Wireless network device not ready” and i don’t have anything in the network list.
Config; Intel Centrino Wireless n-1000
Dell XPS-l701X
Ubuntu 11.10
If you got an idea
Thank you
Mike
November 11, 2011 at 9:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Unfortunately I don’t have much to offer on this. Based on what I did to get this to work on the N4010, your wireless *should* be working. Could you please post the output of
lspci? Thanks!Dominik
June 16, 2012 at 8:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh my god after two frustrating days of trying to get my n1000 to work it was finally that simple :x
Thank you so much for that tutorial!!!