Ubuntu – Cannot change soft block setting to “no” for AR9287 Wireless Network

atheroswireless

My wireless works, but I have to right click the network manager applet and enable wireless on every boot which is annoying.

This is the output of rfkill normally:

x@Triela:~$ rfkill list
0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
2: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

When I rfkill block 0; rfkill block 1 this is what I get:

x@Triela:~$ rfkill list
0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: yes
2: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

When I rfkill unblock all, it clears all but the soft block on 0. My wireless is switched on/off by fn + f3. The indicator light for it is lit when connected, and blinks when there is activity, but it does not show me the on/off state.

I have tried everything I could find on the internet, but nothing has worked to unblock it or keep wireless enabled.

This is the output of my wifi card from lspci -v:

06:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9287 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
    Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device e034
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
    Memory at d0200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
    Capabilities: 
    Kernel driver in use: ath9k
    Kernel modules: ath9k

Best Answer

You may be have a common issue with a clash between the acer-wmi kernel module and your Atheros driver.

Suggestion - copy and paste (line by line) the following into a terminal:

sudo modprobe -r acer-wmi
cd /etc/modprobe.d
sudo nano blacklist.conf

Then add blacklist acer-wmi as a new line at the end of the file.

Save (Ctrl+O) and reboot.

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