Re: killswitch messages flood syslog fixed

[Walter Neumann <neumann math columbia edu>]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007, Aaron Konstam wrote:

> On Sun, 2007-11-11 at 12:26 -0500, walter neumann wrote:
> > Sorry if this has already been said -- I couldn't find any search
> > functionality for this list.  There have been several messages
> > complaining that killswitch error messages flood the syslog
> > (especially on Dell machines that have no physical wlan killswitch,
> > only the keyboard one).
> >
> > The following fixes the problem for me: run on startup
> >
> > hal-device --r dell_wlan_switch
>
> Well I tried this putting the line in rc.local on my Dell laptop. It
> seemed to reduce the:
>
> Nov 11 16:07:48 cyrus last message repeated 11 times
>
> messages but I am still not clear about what is going on, and why this
> formula helps things.

I'm not an expert, but the reason for the messages seems to be that 
NetworkManager tries to query the hardware wireless switch and fires off 
an error message when it fails.  I suspect this is a hal bug -- hal should 
probably not provide the device if it is physically absent. But 
NetworkManager could be nicer by querying the device once to see if it 
exists and then shutting up about it if it doesn't.

Anyway, the command in question removes the device from hal, so 
NetworkManager does not see it and query it.