Arch Linux

Olnex

Member

Registered: 2008-04-10

Posts: 89

no wireless if switch is off on boot

My vaio laptop has a wireless kill switch, if it is switched off and then boot the system, there is no wireless detected even if I switch it on later, I noticed Opensuse 11 also has this problem, they both have kernel 2.6.25, however, Ubuntu Hardy (kernel 2.6.24) does not have this problem, I can switch the wireless on after boot and the system just detects and scans wireless network.

Megamixman

Member

Registered: 2008-05-04

Posts: 73

Re: no wireless if switch is off on boot

Ubuntu has acpid scripts for most major manufacturers. Your RF Kill switch is linked to an acpi event. Find it. Write a script to reload your wireless module and apply any changes like power management. That is what I did for my thinkpad.

The HAL guys are working on getting more and more of the acpi events mapped to keyboard events so we can just use our WM to bind scripts to them. The next HAL revision might have it mapped for you. Its best to check their GIT and see if so. Then you can just download it for now and replace your corresponding FDI file and it should be mappable through your WM.

Last edited by Megamixman (2008-09-02 14:44:22)

Profjim

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 658

Re: no wireless if switch is off on boot

What megamixman says is right, that's how you need to automate the use of the kill switch. On my Vaio, the acpi event is given to my acpi handler script as:

arg $1 = sony/hotkey
arg $2 and arg $3 = I forget, it down't matter
arg $4 = 0000003c to mean radio was switched on, 0000003d to mean radio was switched off

But your hardware may be different. You'll need to log the events or something to see how your hardware is reporting the kill switch actions.

All that being said, though, I think the original poster may have had a different concern: maybe he's finding himself unable to even MANUALLY start up his wifi, if he boots with the radio switched off but subsequently switches it on. If he can't do it manually, then he can't script it either.

If this is the concern, then I suggest that maybe booting with the radio switched off results in your wifi driver not being loaded. So after you switch the radio on, you may have to manually do something like this:

sudo modprobe iwl3945

That's assuming you use sudo not su; and you should replace your own wifi driver for iwl3945. That's what I use on my Vaio, but perhaps you use iwl4965 or something else.

If that doesn't help, then sorry, I don't know what else to suggest. Other than always booting with the radio switched on. How often do you boot your laptop anyway?

alienman

Member

From: Mexico

Registered: 2008-07-08

Posts: 106

Re: no wireless if switch is off on boot

My laptop has a Broadcom wireless device, I used ndiswrapper and I had the same problem. Now I use b43 driver and I can turn on/off anytime even after booting the system when it was previously turned off.

Which driver are you using??

---

ISC - Ignacio Marmolejo
ArchLinux & GNOME User.

radu.pop

Member

Registered: 2008-11-29

Posts: 2

Re: no wireless if switch is off on boot

I'm having the same problem: if I boot with the adapter switched off there's no way so far I could use wlan0 if I switch the adapter on after boot. I do modprobe 43, and watch syslog, it detecs ohci_usb or similar, but no wlan0 is added to sysfs under /devices/net [as it exists if I boot with the adapter on]. Any ideas are welcome.

amranu

Member

Registered: 2008-09-25

Posts: 94

Re: no wireless if switch is off on boot

In order to fix this without rebooting with my card I

sudo modprobe -r iwl4965
sudo modprobe iwl4965

Using modprobe alone won't work though

radu.pop

Member

Registered: 2008-11-29

Posts: 2

Re: no wireless if switch is off on boot

Unfortunatelly, I have no reason for using "modprobe -r" as the modules for my b43 wireless device are not loaded (as the kernels does not detect it, being switched off at boot), so I just "modprobe b43" which loads the b43 module and several more dependant modules, but even so, the wireless interface fails to appear in /proc/net/wireless (for example).