Wifi disabled on the Lenovo Yoga 2 13"

akamikeym · 08-19-2014, 08:10 AM

Hello,

I've installed Fedora 20 on a new Lenovo Yoga 2 13" and I'm having some difficulty getting the Wifi to enabled.

I've read around the subject a bit and some people appear to have been having problems with 'rfkill' setting soft or hard block to 'yes'.

This thread indicated that the latest Fedora kernels should have eliminated this issue. So I managed to download the latest kernel and install the package on the machine (without an internet connection). I also installed rfkill at this point. So I was only able to run rfkill after updating the kernel.

'rfkill list' showed that I was soft blocked on wifi. So I ran 'rfkill unblock wifi' and it now shows as 'no' for all blocks with 'rfkill list'.

I have noticed that I can enable or disable the softblock by pressing the airplane mode key on the keyboard as well.

Unfortunately none of this has actually enabled my Wifi.

I found this thread which explains how to diagnose and compile a kernel module to fix this problem.

And running the command given:

Code:

cat /sys/kernel/debug/ideapad/status

Tells me that "Radio status:" and "Wifi status:" are "off(0)" even when all rfkill blocks are unblocked.

I tried compiling the source provided for a kernel module on the target machine unfortunately I get "Exec format error" when trying to load it with 'modprobe'. I guess its makefile is compiling it for the wrong architecture - I'm on 64 bit.

Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

ondoho · 08-19-2014, 01:07 PM

you have told us nothing about your setup, not even which distro you're running.

even if it's not crunchbang, please follow these instructions.

akamikeym · 08-19-2014, 01:53 PM

Hi ondoho,

Yep, could probably do with more info. As I said I've installed Fedora 20 on it.

I converted the scripts as best I could to the Fedora equivalent commands:

(see attachment for syslog - actually the result of "journalctl -b --no-pager | grep -Ei 'net|wpa|dhc'")

Here is the rest:

Code:

3.15.10-200.fc20.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Aug 14 15:39:24 UTC 2014
01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device [10ec:b723]
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:b736]
	Kernel driver in use: rtl8723be
[    0.152797] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored
[   15.788106] sdhci: Secure Digital Host Controller Interface driver
[   15.788109] sdhci: Copyright(c) Pierre Ossman
[   16.016874] rtl8723be: Using firmware rtlwifi/rtl8723befw.bin
[   16.018396] rtlwifi: Firmware rtlwifi/rtl8723befw.bin not available
0: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no
1: ideapad_bluetooth: Bluetooth
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no
2: hci0: Bluetooth
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no

akamikeym · 08-19-2014, 02:20 PM

Ah ha!

Thanks that pointed me in the correct direction and I now have some form of Wifi connection.

Code:

[   16.018396] rtlwifi: Firmware rtlwifi/rtl8723befw.bin not available

I needed an up-to-date linux-firmware package. So I downloaded it on my virtual machine I setup for downloading Fedora 20 packages on my desktop which can connect to the internet, and then transferred the package across to the Fedora machine and updated it. So in the end I had updated the packages:

Code:

kernel
rfkill
linux-firmware

An interesting experience trying to get a machine running that has absolutely no working networking.

gadfly · 08-26-2014, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by akamikeym

Ah ha!

Thanks that pointed me in the correct direction and I now have some form of Wifi connection.

Code:

[   16.018396] rtlwifi: Firmware rtlwifi/rtl8723befw.bin not available

I needed an up-to-date linux-firmware package. So I downloaded it on my virtual machine I setup for downloading Fedora 20 packages on my desktop which can connect to the internet, and then transferred the package across to the Fedora machine and updated it. So in the end I had updated the packages:

Code:

kernel
rfkill
linux-firmware

An interesting experience trying to get a machine running that has absolutely no working networking.

Do you have any links to help someone new through this process? I have a brand new Yoga 2 11in that I'm trying to get Debian running on. Any assistance you can provide will be GREATLY appreciated.

ondoho · 08-28-2014, 11:52 PM

glad you solved it!

Quote:

Originally Posted by akamikeym

An interesting experience trying to get a machine running that has absolutely no working networking.

...yet a very common one on a new install - the first hurdle.

@gadfly: have you tried the things that are in this thread already? what was the outcome? esp. post #2.