Re: "Wireless disabled in software"

[Jirka Klimes <jklimes redhat com>]

On Saturday 17 of September 2011 00:26:32 Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Timothy Murphy wrote:
> > I'm running NetworkManager 0.9.0-1.fc15 under Fedora-15
> > with kernel 2.6.40-4.fc5.i686.PAE on a ThinkPad T63.
> > 
> > When I hover over the NM icon in the panel I am told
> > "Disconnected Wireless disabled in software".
> 
> OK, I found the problem was that NM had written
> "WirelessEnabled=false" in /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state
> for some reason;
> and re-booting did not change this entry.
> 
> Also I noticed that /var/log/messages did contain an entry about this:
> -----------------------------------
> Sep 16 23:32:32 blanche NetworkManager[730]: <info>
>   WiFi enabled by radio killswitch; disabled by state file
> -----------------------------------
> 
> But how many people would know what the "state file" is?
> (I certainly didn't.)
> Why not say "by the file /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state"?
> 
/var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state state is not meant to be changed 
by users directly.
It's used internally by NM to store user configuration of wireless 
enable/disable state, so that it is persistant. I.e. when user right-click nm-
applet and unchecks "Enable wireless" and then reboots, wireless should stay  
disabled.

> Also, could NM please stop saying "reason: 2";
> if the reason is know why not tell us what it is!!

The reason codes are mainly meant for debugging and can be found at
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/tree/include/NetworkManager.h?id=e30287aa84c30454b97f630d86029cdd68086ead#n276
They was a change recently that enabled printing reason string instead of a 
code number, though. Probably, that's not done on disconnecting as well.

Jirka