iwlwifi working anytime soon?

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 17:28 -0500, Michael E Brown wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 05:49:28PM -0400, Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 17:26 -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 23:07 +0200, Ola Thoresen wrote:
> > > > Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 09:58 -0400, Thomas J. Baker wrote:
> > > > >> Would anyone in the know care to speculate if iwlwifi is going to work
> > > > >> anytime soon? It's been in the kernel for a month or so (at least it
> > > > >> feels like a month) and has never worked for me and many others. From
> > > > >> the kernel changelogs, it doesn't seem like much is happening with it. 
> > > > > 
> > > > > Can people that have been having problems with iwlwifi try with today's
> > > > > rawhide kernel (2.6.20-1.3056.fc7)?  I've had it work for me now on 4
> > > > > laptops connecting to both an unencrypted and an encrypted (WEP) access
> > > > > point where previously that was nowhere near the case ;)
> > > > 
> > > > Not sure if this is a driver problem, or something else.
> > > > I'm still having problems with the hardware kill switch:
> > > > 
> > > > iwlwifi: Intel(R) Wireless Link driver for Linux, 0.0.11k
> > > > iwlwifi: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
> > > > iwlwifi: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection
> > > > iwlwifi: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On:
> > > > iwlwifi: MAC is in deep sleep!
> > > > iwlwifi: MAC is in deep sleep!
> > > > iwlwifi: MAC is in deep sleep!
> > > > 
> > > > No matter how i turn the actual switch the same messages are logged when 
> > > > I modprobe iwlwifi.
> > > 
> > > What hardware is this with?  Does it work if you start out with the kill
> > > switch in the enabled position?
> > 
> > FYI, NM won't work very well with kill switches because there's as yet
> > no standard kernel interface for rfkill.  That's coming along nicely
> > though, it appears.
> 
> Dell systems can use dellWirelessCtl -> userspace binary to control
> wireless kill switch. This binary is in libsmbios-bins, currently in
> Fedora 7 and Fedora Extras for FC6.
> 
> David Zeuthen recently committed support into HAL to interface with
> dellWirelessCtl, so Dell laptops should soon work ok. Contact David if
> you have a Dell laptop of recent vintage (dellWirelessCtl -i to see if
> it works on your box) and it doesnt 'just work'.

There is a standard kernel interface for killswitches that is getting
close to complete.  There's a disgusting number of kill switch
implementations [1] that it has to support, but it appears to do the
job.  Eventually, all vendor-specific stuff needs to be ported to use
it, which shouldn't be too hard.  HAL then needs to be hooked up to
that, and NetworkManager will just use the generic HAL interfaces to
deal with rfkill.

Dan

[1] Including:
- Button triggers ACPI events from BIOS
- Button is just another input layer (ie vendor-specific keyboard)
button
- Button wired directly to baseband processor antenna path
- Button toggles GPIO which sends signal to driver which kills RF
- Button toggles USB power to module, drops off USB bus like hot-unplug
- Button is a dual-state toggle rather than an up/down button