Re: howto ignore rfkill switch

[Jim Cromie <jim cromie gmail com>]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 9:44 AM, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-04-21 at 18:49 -0600, Jim Cromie wrote:

>> 1 - with only built-in wifi card, I get a blank list.

>> 2 - once I plug in the pcmcia and usb cards, theyre both unblocked,
>> but the builtin (ipw2200) is still missing.

>> 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?


Interesting. At 1st, I failed to see this as responsive;
how could removing a driver enable others ?
but I tried anyway, and lo-and-behold:

with ipw2200 rmmod'd, I can now enable the pcmcia card
(which didnt work before), after a few tries, it connected !!
It held for several minutes, then dropped, and wont reconnect,
but that appears to be something else
So laptop is usable (w/o a leash) again, thanks!

so, what happened ?  Is this a teachable moment ?

1- I re-modprobed ipw2200, and NM promptly killed the
pcmcia card's connection, and shows both wifis as disabled.

2- rmmod again removes both cards from NM-applets
available wifi-interfaces list, but ejecting and reinserting pcmcia
card reconnects.

3- doing this also increments phy#, Im now on phy3
(this isnt surprising/noteworthy really)


Im also a bit unclear on soft/hard/platform distinctions,
perhaps others are too.

1- my kill switch affects plugin devices, so it cant be a hardware kill switch;
hardware kills are directly connected to internal devices, and theres
no such pcb-trace that crosses the USB plug  ( there *could* be in the
pcmcia connector, but that too seems unlikely )
Or do I read 'hardware' too literally ?

2- the rfkill-LED is hard-wired to switch.
I cant prove this though; since I cant toggle the switch,
"udevadm monitor" cant see events that dont happen.

3- why doesnt "rfkill list all" show the internal wifi device ?
Is there a way for it to read and report a platform rfkill ?
(presumably just once)

4- rfkill module is used by sony_laptop module,
does this make my kill switch a 'platform kill' ?

tia