[ltp] rfkill in 2.6.27

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Wed, 06 Aug 2008, Tino Keitel wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 00:05:22 +0200, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> > due to brightness keys testing, I'm currently waving between 2.6.26 and
> > 2.6.27 (git). I noticed now the bluetooth LED is alway on when booting
> > (even when I blacklist hci_usb), and I now from reading thinkpad-acpi
> > documentation that /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth is deprecated and the sysfs
> > interface too.
> 
> I also noticed this.

rfkill will take its place.  But deprecated in thinkpad-acpi doesn't mean I
rip it off without warning.  It does mean you are not allowed to complain
when I finally rip it off, because you WERE warned it would be removed.

Expect the thinkpad-acpi-specific sysfs interface to stay around for a while
yet (one year or so, at least).  Procfs will go when /proc/acpi goes, and I
don't know when that will happen.

Look at Documentation/rfkill.txt if you want to know what's the new
interface like.

BTW, much of the reason why there have been no updates to thinkpad-acpi in a
while is that I am working on improving rfkill.  I hope I will be back to
thinkpad-acpi work soon.

> > Currently I can switch off all radio using the switch on front of my
> > T61, but it'll turn off bluetooth *and* wifi. Which is nice for when no
> > radio needs to be emitted, but for my general use is not. I'd like a way
> > to activate bluetooth or wifi independantly.

It is in my TODO for rfkill.  It will restore state, so when you switch off,
it blocks all radios.  When you switch on, it will restore the radios to
whatever state they were (blocked/unblocked) before you switched them off.

But it will not be the default, you will need to tell rfkill-input to switch
to that operation mode.

> Yeah. And more important (for me), is there a difference in power
> consumtion between disabling WLAN/bluetooth in software and the rfkill
> switch?

Not for bluetooth.  For WLAN depends on the WLAN driver, it is either equal,
or software does it better (the driver *could* shutdown the card entirely if
it wanted, hardware only blocks the radio but the card remains running).

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh