[ltp] Upcoming changes to thinkpad-acpi (your chance to comment on them)

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Sun, 19 Oct 2008, Jens Rutschmann wrote:
>> 3. Preserve rfkill state of *some* radios across shutdown.  This is valid
>> for bluetooth, and might just work for WWAN too.  If you turn the thinkpad
>> off with the radio working, it will boot with the radio working.  If you
>> turn the thinkpad off with the radio disabled, it will boot with the radio
>> disabled. (done, needs testing, will be pushed out soon)
>
> Does this also mean that bluetooth won't be switched on by default when 
> loading the thinkpad_acpi module if I switched it off using the 
> bluetooth_enable sysfs interface previously ?

Correct.  And if it doesn't do just that, let me know :-)

I will see if I can manage to push a new thinkpad-acpi release today or
tomorrow, with the above.

> I always thought that rfkill stuff was all about the little hardware 
> sliding switch at the left front side of the thinkpads.

Read Documentation/rfkill.txt after you patch in the new thinkpad-acpi (it
has an almost full rfkill backport from wireless-testing built-in :p) to get
a better idea of how complex rfkill is.  rfkill (kernel) is about
*everything* in the path from an input event to making sure a wireless
transmitter is not emitting energy.  The part that looks at an input device
(the small switch) is actually just an input driver.  And there is also
rfkill-input, which is an input handler that has intimate knowledge of how
input events related to rfkill should be handled, and does just that.

Thinkpad-acpi is a mixed driver: it has an input driver for the switch and
hotkeys, and rfkill drivers for bluetooth, UWB and W-WAN.

> Sorry if I'm confusing something here ...

A quick look at linux-wireless will prove to you that so far, NOBODY has
managed to NOT be confused by rfkill, me and its maintainer included.

-- 
  "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