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I have an Alienware X51 desktop with a wireless card, I have it connected via ethernet and want to permanently disable WiFi from ever using itself.

When running Windows, I go to device manager and rightclick-disable the Wireless card and that takes care of my problem. Is there a similar method using Ubuntu 14.04?

For now, I click on the network icon in the system tray and uncheck 'Enable wifi' but it seems to turn itself back on as I use my computer, I think I have the incident isolated to something with Steam. It seems like after I start the Steam client it always is re-enabled.

Hopeful answer: Just disable/remove/block wireless card from ever working.

EDIT: Ok, it is official, the game client Steam is enabling WiFi every single time I launch it, even after going to Settings>Network>Wireless>Disable & Airplane mode on. Any idea why the client is activating WiFi when I have a perfectly good ethernet connection?

Mike Uresti
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3 Answers3

4

Fire up the terminal and type this

rfkill list all

Note Down the number corresponding to wlan and use this command

rfkill block 1

replace 1 with the number of your wireless card

neo321
  • 51
2

If you wish to permanently disable the wireless, blacklist its driver. Find the driver with:

sudo lshw -C network

Under the wireless device, the driver will be shown. As an example:

*-network description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Advanced-N 6200 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 logical name: wlan0 clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.13.0-etc.

In this case, we'd blacklist iwlwifi. From the terminal:

sudo -i
echo "blacklist iwlwifi"  >>  /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
modprobe -r iwlwifi
exit

There are a couple of drivers that don't report exactly in lshw. If the driver shows as wl0, you need to blacklist wl. If it shows as b43-pci-bridge, you need to blacklist b43. If in doubt, post your result and we'll be happy to help.

You should be all set.

chili555
  • 61,330
1

Please run the following command and copy the results here

ifconfig -a

This will show the interface name of you Wifi interface.

You usually will get something like (wlan0, ath0, wifi0, or eth0 )

I will explain further down assuming that your interface name is wlan0

issue the following command (in a terminal)

sudo ifdown wlan0

Now remove the config file for the wlan0 (your wifi)

sudo rm /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0

P.s when using sudo , you will be requested to enter your root password.

after that your wifi will be disabled till the config file re-created again (this can be done manually or through the network manager you installed)

Ahmed Elsokary
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