Re: [madwifi-tickets] [MadWifi] #706: Disable Radio by Software

#706: Disable Radio by Software
-------------------------------------------------------+--------------------
      Reporter:  andy (dot) boehler (at) gmx (dot) at  |       Owner:           
                           
          Type:  enhancement                           |      Status:  new      
                           
      Priority:  minor                                 |   Milestone:  version 
1.0.0 - first stable release
     Component:  madwifi: driver                       |     Version:  trunk    
                           
    Resolution:                                        |    Keywords:  RF-Kill, 
Disable Radio, rfkill      
Patch_attached:  0                                     |  
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Comment (by espy@xxxxxxxxxx):

 I needed the same feature.  The Pepper Pad allows the user to ''disable''
 WiFi for improved battery life and also for situations where the radio
 needs to be turned off ( ie. airplanes ).

 The Pepper Pad 2 used a Prism-based PCMCIA Wi-Fi card and to disable the
 radio, I just ejected the card via the ''cardctl'' PCMCIA command-line
 tool.

 The Pepper Pad 3 uses a mini-PCI card.  I've found that there's no
 ''standard'' way to disable and/or suspend an individual PCI device from
 userspace, nor from what I could find is this is supported by the kernel
 (2.6.12).

 So...what I did was hi-jack the PCI suspend mechanism and cause it to be
 invoked via the private '''SETPARAM''' ioctl called using the '''sleep'''
 parameter.

 When a value of ''1'' is received for the ''sleep'' parameter, I lookup
 the PCI device for our WiFi card using {{{pci_get_device()}}} with the
 device and vendor ids, and then I call {{{pdev->driver->suspend(pdev,
 PCI_D3hot);}}} which is the same thing the low-level {{{pci_suspend()}}}
 function does.

 Also for safety sake, I remove all of the MADWiFi modules after putting
 the card to sleep.  Not doing this lead to lockups and/or system ooops.

 To re-enable the radio, I just re-insert the MADWiFi modules, no need to
 issue the '''SETPARAM''' ioctl with ''sleep'' set to 0 ( although the code
 is there ).

 I haven't confirmed that this suspend actually saves power and/or turns
 off the radio, but it's a first step.

 '''Note''' - there is a '''HAL_PM_FULL_SLEEP''' constant defined in
 {{{/hal/ah.h}}}.  There's a chunk of code in {{{ath_stop()}}} that calls
 {{{ath_hal_setpower(...,HAL_PM_FULL_SLEEP)}}}, but it's surrounded by an
 {{{#if 0}}} block.  There's also a comment about it being tricky to use
 due to timing issues.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://madwifi.org/ticket/706>
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