x121e - How to enable WWAN/Bluetooth on Linux? [ Edited ]

[kold]

Hello everyone,

does anyone know what the Lenovo Hotkey tool on Windows is doing technically behind the scenes to enable Bluetooth and the WWAN card?

Does it connect on serial COM4 to the WWAN card and enter some AT commands to enable it? I hope it is not some kind of secret sauce and Lenovo can share with us the details.

This notebook has no hardware switches to enable those devices, which means it has to be done somehow in software.

Unfortunately I want to run only Ubuntu Linux on this nice device. When I activate BT and WWAN on Windows 7, they stay enabled for 1 reboot on Ubuntu. After a second reboot, they are disabled and cannot be enabled via software on Linux. I have to boot Windows and launch the Hotkeys utility again.

After all what I have been through with this notebook regarding the wireless lan card [1], it would be nice to finally enjoy just working with it ;-)

• ThinkPad x121e (3045)
• Intel I3
• BIOS Version 1.15
• Ericsson F5521gw WWAN

I'm grateful for any hints.

Best regards,

Jochen

1) Broadcom BCM43224 - unstable latency: sudo iwconfig eth1 power off / http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1608989

[RMattoo]

Hi,

Please refer the below details

Lenovo Hotkey tool on Windows -------- Technical information

The command line control for Wireless switching hot key (Fn+F5) feature. It is available to control the wireless radio using the following command;     C:\Program Files\Lenovo\HOTKEY\TpFnF5.exe [PARAMETER]
The following parameters are defined;
/WLON, /WLOFF Turn on/off internal 802.11.
/BTON, /BTOFF Turn on/off internal bluetooth.
/WANON, /WANOFF Turn on/off internal WAN.
/UWBON, /UWBOFF Turn on/off internal UWB.
/ALLON, /ALLOFF Turn on/off any radio at once.

Turning on the WWAN card :
Turning the card onFirst, check whenever the SIM is protected by PIN by sendin g

AT+CPIN?
to /dev/ttyACM1. You can do it with any terminal terminal program like cu or minicom. If the answer is

+CPIN: READY
then the SIM is unlocked. If the answer is

+CPIN: SIM PIN
you need first to unlock it by sending

AT+CPIN="YOUR-PIN"
to /dev/ttyACM1. Now the card can be turned on by sending

AT+CFUN=1
to /dev/ttyACM1. The answer should be

+PACSP0
Don't try to do anything until you see it. To force GSM-only connection, send

AT+CFUN=5
to /dev/ttyACM1. To force WCDMA-only connection, send

AT+CFUN=6
to /dev/ttyACM1.

Turning the card onFirst, check whenever the SIM is protected by PIN by sending

AT+CPIN?
to /dev/ttyACM1. You can do it with any terminal terminal program like cu or minicom. If the answer is

+CPIN: READY
then the SIM is unlocked. If the answer is

+CPIN: SIM PIN
you need first to unlock it by sending

AT+CPIN="YOUR-PIN"
to /dev/ttyACM1. Now the card can be turned on by sending

AT+CFUN=1
to /dev/ttyACM1. The answer should be

+PACSP0
Don't try to do anything until you see it. To force GSM-only connection, send

AT+CFUN=5
to /dev/ttyACM1. To force WCDMA-only connection, send

AT+CFUN=6
to /dev/ttyACM1.

Turning on the Bluetooth :

One can enable Bluetooth by pressing FnF5.

If this doesn't work, you can load the thinkpad-acpi kernel module and run the following command with root privileges:

# echo "enable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth

When Bluetooth is enabled, the Bluetooth-logo LED will light up

Toggling the Bluetooth device on/off is very easy on Lenovo Thinkpads

 The following commands active and deactivate bluetooth.

$echo "enable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth

$echo "disable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth

This works for both Fedora and Ubuntu.

I hope this helps

Best Regards

Rakesh

[kold]

Hello Rakesh,

at first I would like to thank you for taking time to help me out with this. Here are the results of my tests:

The kernel module thinkpad_acpi was already loaded and I have tried all tests also with the experimental=1 parameter as well.

root@disorder:/proc/acpi/ibm# rfkill list
0: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: yes
1: tpacpi_wwan_sw: Wireless WAN
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: yes
2: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
  	Hard blocked: no

Pressing Fn+F5 only changes the "Soft blocked" state of Bluetooth, but not the "Hard blocked" state. It also doesn't
change neither the soft nor the hard blocked state of the WWAN card.

root@disorder:/proc/acpi/ibm# rfkill list
0: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: yes
1: tpacpi_wwan_sw: Wireless WAN
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: yes
2: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
  	Hard blocked: no

Trying to enable the hardware via the proc filesystem doesn't work either.

root@disorder:/proc/acpi/ibm# echo "enable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth 
root@disorder:/proc/acpi/ibm# cat /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth 
status:		disabled
commands:	enable, disable

root@disorder:/proc/acpi/ibm# echo "enable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/wan 
root@disorder:/proc/acpi/ibm# cat wan
status:		disabled
commands:	enable, disable

"rfkill unblock all" changes the soft blocking state of bluetooth and WWAN, but not the hard state.

root@disorder:/proc/acpi/ibm# rfkill list
0: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: yes
1: tpacpi_wwan_sw: Wireless WAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: yes
2: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
  	Hard blocked: no

Here are the tests I did regarding the WWAN card (PIN was changed in output):

minicom -D /dev/ttyACM1

AT+CPIN?
+CPIN: SIM PIN

OK
AT+CPIN="1234"
OK
AT+CFUN=1
ERROR
AT+CFUN?
+CFUN: 4

OK
AT+CFUN=1
ERROR

AT+CFUN=?                                                                       
+CFUN: (0,1,4-6),(0,1)                                                          
										
OK                                  

I can't set the CFUN state to 1 somehow. I'm sure this isn't a hardware issue and the SIM card is also fine,
because everything works under Windows 7. I've paired the x121e and a mobile phone via Bluetooth and was on
the Internet with the WWAN card. When I connected with Putty on the serial port of the WWAN card, I could
see that CFUN was set to 1 under Windows.

I'm sure there is something else the Hotkey Utility is doing on Windows, which we are missing here.

Thanks again for trying to help me out.

Best regards,

Jochen

[kold · Accepted solution]

I was finally able to fix the issue with the following two links:

1) https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1070997#p1070997

2) https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIBooting#Non-Mac_x86_64_UEFI_systems

Since I was already running bios 1.15, I only had to reset the BIOS to it's default settings. After doing that, my boot loader was gone and I had a "Operating system not found" message on the screen.

I have restored the bootloader with the Ubuntu Oneiric x64 alternate installer, the rescue system menu option and the following commands:

mount /boot
mount /boot/efi

grub-probe --target=device /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi
-> Command returned "/dev/sda1"

efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/sda --part 1 --write-signature --label "GRUB2" --loader '\EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi'

The disk device and the partition number can vary, depending on the hardware and the partitioning scheme.

Now I'm able to active Bluetooth and the WWAN card. They are also now listed as hardware unblocked in rfkill.

Time to bug Broadcom to fix the latency issues in their Linux driver ;-)

[mhdere]

Perfect explanation and doc. It also works for Lenovo ThinkPad E120 Ubuntu 12.04 LTS: 

# echo "enable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth.

Thanks.

[sudaltsov]

Are there any better news about it? Is it known by now - what exactly prevents Linux from enabling and disabling BT/WWAN, without that strange game with BIOS defaults? Thank you