Re: Shutting down specific device

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2009-03-10 at 12:20 -0700, Drew Moseley wrote:
> Is there a bit of scripting magic where I can force a specific
> network device to shut down?
> 
> We have a device that when it is powered down via external switch,
> Network Manager handles it but sees a state change to FAILED so it
> is marked as invalid.  I'd like to be able to tell Network Manager
> that it should be disconnected so it is handled more gracefully.

Does the device get hot-unplugged from the machine when its switched
off?  Or does it look like rfkill?  Obviously you need to get *some*
indication in the kernel that the device is no longer available.  The
normal indications of this are "no carrier" (wired) or "rfkill" (wifi).
I'd suggest using either of those if you can.

If it's wired, your driver should be setting netif_carrier_off() and NM
will handle that appropriately.  If it's wifi, the driver should be
hooking into the kernel's rfkill subsystem and setting the rfkill device
to the "hard-blocked" state, which NM (through HAL's killswitch support)
will pick up.

Dan