News for Lenovo S10-3s Linux Users

I have just gotten a very good tip from the Ubuntu Launchpad Bug list. I had filed a report some time ago about the acer_wmi module interfering with the Broadcom 4313 WiFi driver, and causing the S10 to hang. Someone else just posted a reply saying that if you "unblock" the wireless devices first, then unload the acer_wmi module, it seems to work. I have just tested it very quickly on Linux Mint 11, and it certainly does seem to work. So if (and ONLY if) you have an S10-3s running Linux and you have been having this problem (I have seen it on mine with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian and SimplyMEPIS), add these two lines to /etc/rc.local:

rfkill unblock all modprobe -r acer_wmi

Then make soure that you do NOT have acer_wmi in the modprobe.d blacklist file. Reboot, and the WiFi networking should be working great.

What is important here is the sequence of the commands, and I had not thought of that. I had always been unloading the acer_wmi kernel module first then unblocking the interfaces, and that was causing the system to hang.

jw 1/6/2011

P.S. When I originally posted this, I was in a bit too much of a hurry to pass along the news. I didn't stop and think about what it was doing. The rc.local script is obviously run as root during startup, so there is no need to "sudo" these commands. As such, I have removed that from the text above. Sorry.

jw