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My machine has two network interfaces (wired and wireless). My problem is that I cannot use both my nic and my wireless nic at the same time. When my wireless nic is connected and then I connect my nic, my wireless nic gets disabled automatically once my nic becomes active. How do I disable this behavior?

I dug these critical messages from journalctl:

Jun 05 16:14:54 beast-att kernel: iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: RF_KILL bit toggled to disable radio.
Jun 05 16:14:54 beast-att kernel: iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: reporting RF_KILL (radio disabled)

Here is the output rfkill list:

$ rfkill list
0: hci0: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
1: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
2: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
3: phy0: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: yes

iwlwifi has activated a hard block on phy0.

I have attempted to fix my issue with findings from this other question. I tried BIOS changes (turned off switching on my WLAN), playing with the wireless network toggle button, removing *wmi* modules, simply executing rfkill unblock all - nothing worked.

Here is my lsmod | grep wmi output:

$ lsmod | grep wmi
dell_wmi               16384  0
dell_smbios            24576  2 dell_wmi,dell_laptop
intel_wmi_thunderbolt    16384  0
mxm_wmi                16384  0
wmi_bmof               16384  0
dell_wmi_descriptor    16384  2 dell_wmi,dell_smbios
snd_rawmidi            32768  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_device         16384  3 snd_seq,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi
snd                    81920  17 snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi
wmi                    24576  6 intel_wmi_thunderbolt,dell_wmi,wmi_bmof,dell_smbios,dell_wmi_descriptor,mxm_wmi
sparse_keymap          16384  2 intel_hid,dell_wmi
video                  45056  3 dell_wmi,dell_laptop,i915

I tried removing dell_wmi, intel_wmi_thunderbolt, mxm_wmi using modprobe -r with no effect to my problem.

Here are details of my wireless nic using lspci -vk:

00:14.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless-AC 9560 [Jefferson Peak] (rev 10)
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 4030
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
        Memory at ed43c000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: [c8] Power Management version 3
        Capabilities: [d0] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
        Capabilities: [40] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
        Capabilities: [80] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=16 Masked-
        Capabilities: [100] #00
        Capabilities: [14c] Latency Tolerance Reporting
        Capabilities: [164] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0010 Rev=0 Len=014 <?>
        Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
        Kernel modules: iwlwifi

I'm running ubuntu 18.04 on a Dell Precision 3530.

I've been looking for a solution to prevent the auto blocking but I'm also open to a solution that would allow me to manually unblock after the block has occurred.

Thank you in advance.

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  • Is there any setting in BIOS about WLAN/LAN? The iwlwifi is just reporting the rfkill setting it gets from BIOS/UEFI
    – Jeremy31
    Jun 6, 2019 at 20:47
  • @Jeremy31 you are correct. The fix turned out to be a BIOS setting. I think the log message RF_KILL bit toggled to disable radio is misleading. I interpreted that message as iwlwifi had done the disabling.
    – mikehwang
    Jun 7, 2019 at 17:39

1 Answer 1

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Turns out my issue is really a "feature". Turning-off-the-wireless-nic-automatically is a power management feature that's configurable in BIOS. See this Dell webpage. (Thanks DK for your help!)

To my defense, when I was investigating, I was playing with the settings under Wireless and didn't think that there was another wireless setting under Power Management - ugh.

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  • Thanks a lot, you made my day ! I've spent like 2 days figuring out where this wifi problem comes from. I was far from thinking that it actually comes from a (stupid) power management option. Anyway, thanks again.
    – Duddy67
    Feb 20, 2023 at 17:10

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