[Debian-eeepc-devel] [Acpi4asus-user] rfkill, eeepc-laptop, and ath9k

[Corentin Chary]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:37 PM, Alan Jenkins
<sourcejedi.lkml at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 12/8/09, Kevin Goodsell <kevin-opensource at omegacrash.net> wrote:
>> I know this isn't really an ACPI issue but it must affect the ACPI
>> scripts, and I haven't been able to find any useful information anywhere
>> else, so I'm wondering what if anything you guys know about it.
>>
>> The problem as I understand it, is that eeepc-laptop and ath9k both
>> provide an rfkill interface for the wifi device. These two interfaces
>> are different somehow and don't play nice together. On my 1005HA running
>> Squeeze I had to write a new script to handle wifi toggling at least
>> somewhat reliably. To turn off wifi, the script unloads ath9k and writes
>> 0 to the eeepc-wlan rfkill interface. To turn wifi back on, it writes 1
>> to the eeepc-wlan rfkill interface, modprobes ath9k, sleeps for 5
>> seconds, then writes 1 to ath9k's rfkill interface.
>>
>> Does anyone have any idea why we have these two rfkill interfaces, what
>> the "right" way to handle this is, and/or whether anyone is planning on
>> fixing this? I find surprisingly little about the problem by googling.
>>
>> Thanks.
>
> (Damyan explained why we get two rfkill devices)
>
> [CC eeepc-laptop module list]
>
> The eeepc-laptop module is known to have problems on the 1005HA, with
> rfkill in particular.  There are a couple of ideas to avoid the known
> problem where the _wired_ network adaptor disappears due to rfkill.
> Corentin (the maintainer) is planning to write a new driver for the
> 1005HA.  But I don't think we've heard your problem before, so thanks
> for the report :).
I'm planning to do so if I can get a 1005HA, a good way to help that
is to make a small donation to the acpi4asus project :).


> Unfortunately, even if you disable the acpi script entirely,  I think
> the in-kernel rfkill-input will toggle the eeepc-laptop rfkill.  (The
> kernel includes a default handler for KEY_WLAN).
>
> I can only counsel patience.  (And leaving the wireless enabled :).
> If you really need something working now, a quick hack might be to
> write an acpi script to toggle the ath9k rfkill on fn+f6.
I also suggest you to use the ath9k rfkill. Actually, I don't know if
there will really be a big difference for power saving.


-- 
Corentin Chary
http://xf.iksaif.net