Re: howto ignore rfkill switch

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2010-04-21 at 18:49 -0600, Jim Cromie wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 4:24 PM, Vladimir Botka <vbotka gmail com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:09:19 -0600
> > Jim Cromie <jim cromie gmail com> wrote:
> >
> >> Im willing to disable the rfkill code thats shutting things down,
> >> but would appreciate advice on how to do so, or whether theres
> >> a simpler approach that avoids code changes (my hope).
> >
> > Install the rfkill utility and check the status [1]. Maybe you succeed
> > to "rfkill unblock  .." it.
> >
> > # rfkill list all
> > 0: sony-wifi: Wireless LAN
> >        Soft blocked: no
> >        Hard blocked: no
> 
> 
> 
> thanks Vlado, that gets me more info (but no solution yet)
> 
> 1 - with only built-in wifi card, I get a blank list.
> 
> [jimc harpo ~]$ rfkill list all
> [jimc harpo ~]$ lsmod | grep ipw
> ipw2200               115811  0
> libipw                 20827  1 ipw2200
> lib80211                4062  2 ipw2200,libipw
> 
> 2 - once I plug in the pcmcia and usb cards, theyre both unblocked,
> but the builtin (ipw2200) is still missing.
> 
> [jimc harpo ~]$ rfkill list all
> 1: phy1: Wireless LAN
> 	Soft blocked: no
> 	Hard blocked: no
> 2: phy2: Wireless LAN
> 	Soft blocked: no
> 	Hard blocked: no
> 
> Blocking and unblocking alters the displayed state (as above)
> but NM-applet says that all 3 are disabled.

Yes, for a number of reasons.  First, we can't usually figure out which
killswitch is for which wifi device.  It's often just not possible, plus
"platform" killswitches provided by your laptop BIOS aren't tied to a
specific wifi device.  Second, you're probably better off blacklisting
the internal wifi driver modules so they simply don't load in the first
place.  Add the names (libipw, ipw2200) to
to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf to do this.

If you rmmod ipw2200, what happens?

Dan