Re: NM tidbits

[Matthew Saltzman <mjs ces clemson edu>]

On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Dan Williams wrote:

> On Thu, 2006-01-26 at 10:18 +0100, Nikolaus Filus wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Thursday 26 January 2006 00:12, Robert Love wrote:
> > > But note that since, as Dan said, 'Enable Wireless' now turns off all
> > > wireless (not just scanning) that point is already moot.  The decision
> > > is whether to offer an option to turn of all wireless, an option to
> > > turn off everything, or both.
> >
> > What is this "enable/disable wireless" good for, when most notebooks
> > should either have a physical or software radio switch. So KISS, as there
> > is another tool for solving this.
>
> This is true, and I was just going to bring this up.  Practical
> considerations though, make this less than ideal.  First, not all
> laptops have an RF kill switch.  Second, there isn't a good facility to
> notify userspace that the RF has been killed at all.  So ideally we
> would have NetworkManager listen to the drivers (or netlink, or
> whatever) such that when the RF kill switch has been activated, we
> deactivate the device.  Need to remember this when people start
> designing the new netlink replacement for WEXT.
>
> Dan

(1) My notbook has no accessible hardware control of the built-in wireless 
card.

(2) NM is my laptop's "network manager".  If I wanted to look for a 
software button that would turn off my wireless card, that's the first 
place I would look.

--
		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs