[PLUG] Scanning for and connecting to wifi networks

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Sun Nov 9 01:14:54 UTC 2014


On Sat, 08 Nov 2014 16:16:40 -0800
Russell Senior <russell at personaltelco.net> dijo:

>>>>>> "King" == King Beowulf <kingbeowulf at gmail.com> writes:
>
>King> On 11/07/2014 11:29 PM, John Jason Jordan wrote:
>>> Xubuntu 14.04.1, fresh install shortly after it was released.
>>> 
>>> I know there are commands that can be used to scan for available
>>> wifi networks and to connect to them, but I can't remember what
>>> they are and my google fu is failing me. Can someone remind me?
>
>King> Why not use Network Manager or Wicd?  Both are in the (X)Ubuntu
>King> repos and include applets in GMOME/Xfce/KDE to make scanning and
>King> connecting to wifi APs a one click affair.
>
>I can tell you that network-manager is slow to find new networks.  I
>assume because it only does scans periodically.  You can force a scan
>with "iw wlan0 scan" (assuming wlan0 is your wifi interface).

Indeed, wlan0 is the interface. But things did not work out the way I
expected:

jjj at Devil-Bonobo:~$ iw wlan0 scan
command failed: Operation not permitted (-1)
jjj at Devil-Bonobo:~$ sudo iw wlan0 scan
[sudo] password for jjj: 
command failed: Network is down (-100)
jjj at Devil-Bonobo:~$ ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted
jjj at Devil-Bonobo:~$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not possible due to RF-kill

This is a System76 Bonobo Extreme. I know on my old T61 there is a
physical switch to turn off all radios for airplane mode. I looked all
over the Bonobo Extreme but I can't find a physical switch. However,
when I click on the nm-applet icon in the panel all the wifi options
are grayed out with no apparent way to turn them back on. I wonder how
I managed to kill the RF and how I can bring it back to life. 



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