iwlwifi working anytime soon?

[Michael E Brown]

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'.

--
Michael