[ltp] Wireless hardware radio switch does not work on X60s

[linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org]

On Wednesday 30 May 2007 21:13, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> Did you check if it is really transmitting and receiving?  I.e. can you
> associate and use the wireless network with the switch in the OFF position?

Yes. Wireless is working fine, switch is in off position. I even played around 
with it turning it back and forth but nothing happened. And I must say that 
it is very poor engineering. It is _very_ difficult to slide it back and 
forth the way it is intended with finger over the switch, but _too easy_ to 
switch it when pushing it from the two tiny edges. It almost makes me think 
it is loose and broken.

> AFAIK, it is hardware driven.  On the T43, it's bios equivalent switch does
> something to the IPW2915 card that causes the Intel driver to flag that a
> hardware rf kill switch is active (and you cannot override that).

Maybe this is because I do not have an Intel IPW3945ABG card? I have the 
Atheros AR5006EX [1] using Madwifi driver. Or as lspci shows: AR5212.

> Lenovo is not IBM, and doesn't even come close.  I wish I could say they
> are working at it, but I don't see that, either.

What do you mean by this? Is Lenovo doing a poor job at documentation? Do you 
mean that Lenovo is being less cooperative than IBM with you? My guess is 
both, which is too bad. I still think that hardware (not compatibility) wise 
they make the best machines on the market.

> It won't, but see if the wireless card driver has a rfkill sysfs attribute
> (Intel cards should), and what it says.

I believe that the madwifi drivers do have the rfkill attribute [2], but I am 
not sure how to confirm this on my system. I tested with rfkill=0 and 
rfkill=1 which produced the same results of the wireless always being on 
regardless of the switch state.

However, according to the thinkwiki entry [1], a T60 also has a switch that 
does not operate: "On at least one T60, model 2007-62U with Atheros AR5212, 
running Ubuntu Edgy with the MadWifi driver, the wireless switch has no 
effect. Wireless operates with the switch in either position. But there's an 
experimental patch which adds support of the switch to ibm-acpi."

Also, I cannot believe that I never noticed this, but the wireless light is 
always off, even if the wireless card is turned on and in use. I take it that 
this is a driver (madwifi) issue then?

[1] 
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkPad_11a/b/g_Wireless_LAN_Mini_Express_Adapter
[2] http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/MiniPCI