Rfkill always soft/hard blocked upon boot

Rfkill always soft/hard blocked upon boot

[Ozan Çağlayan]

Hi,

How to fix or debug the $subject? You always have to press Fn+F2 to hard 
unblock the rfkill after every boot on a local brand laptop.

If the rfkill switch is really a switch which can be toggled on/off, 
this makes sense. If you keep it Off, it will come as blocked. But it 
seems that on this machine Fn+F2 controls the hard block state.

It should either be saved in somewhere (I've read that there is a 
persistent knob for rfkill drivers in sysfs which tells whether the 
state is kept in a non-volatile space across boots or not) or all soft 
and this kind of Fn+Fx hard blocks should be explicitly disabled by 
kernel during boots.

I don't have direct access to the machine but the owner will help if you 
need any output, etc.

After booting:

0: hci0: Bluetooth
         Soft blocked: no
         Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
         Soft blocked: no
         Hard blocked: yes

After pressing Fn+F2:
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
         Soft blocked: no
         Hard blocked: no
1: hci0: Bluetooth
         Soft blocked: no
         Hard blocked: no

03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless 
Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
         Subsystem: Device 1a3b:1089
         Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
         Memory at f1d00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
         Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
         Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
         Capabilities: [60] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
         Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
         Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel
         Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-15-17-ff-ff-24-14-12
         Capabilities: [170] Power Budgeting <?>
         Kernel driver in use: ath9k
         Kernel modules: ath9k

This is on 2.6.37. I'm waiting for the dmesg output.

-- 
Pardus Linux
http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng

Re: Rfkill always soft/hard blocked upon boot

[Larry Finger]

On 01/30/2011 06:46 AM, Ozan Çağlayan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> How to fix or debug the $subject? You always have to press Fn+F2 to hard
> unblock the rfkill after every boot on a local brand laptop.
> 
> If the rfkill switch is really a switch which can be toggled on/off,
> this makes sense. If you keep it Off, it will come as blocked. But it
> seems that on this machine Fn+F2 controls the hard block state.
> 
> It should either be saved in somewhere (I've read that there is a
> persistent knob for rfkill drivers in sysfs which tells whether the
> state is kept in a non-volatile space across boots or not) or all soft
> and this kind of Fn+Fx hard blocks should be explicitly disabled by
> kernel during boots.
> 
> I don't have direct access to the machine but the owner will help if you
> need any output, etc.
> 
> After booting:
> 
> 0: hci0: Bluetooth
>         Soft blocked: no
>         Hard blocked: no
> 1: phy0: Wireless LAN
>         Soft blocked: no
>         Hard blocked: yes
> 
> After pressing Fn+F2:
> 0: phy0: Wireless LAN
>         Soft blocked: no
>         Hard blocked: no
> 1: hci0: Bluetooth
>         Soft blocked: no
>         Hard blocked: no
> 
> 03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless
> Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
>         Subsystem: Device 1a3b:1089
>         Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
>         Memory at f1d00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
>         Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
>         Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
>         Capabilities: [60] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
>         Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
>         Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel
>         Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-15-17-ff-ff-24-14-12
>         Capabilities: [170] Power Budgeting <?>
>         Kernel driver in use: ath9k
>         Kernel modules: ath9k
> 
> This is on 2.6.37. I'm waiting for the dmesg output.

The nature of that Fn-F2 key depends on how the motherboard manufacturer coded
their BIOS. Most do it as a toggle and use some WMI (Windows Management
Interface) code to initialize it on boot up. As this no-name laptop is unlikely
to have a WMI driver the way that name brands do, it probably generates a
keystroke. That is easy to check - Use CTRL-ALT-F1 to switch to a console, log
in, and issue the command "showkey". Is a keycode returned when Fn-F2 is pressed?

If the button does generate a key event, then adding a command to generate this
key in a script that is executed after bootup should solve the problem. I don't
know the command you need, but I'm sure someone will. Where to put that command
will depend on your distro.

Larry

Re: Rfkill always soft/hard blocked upon boot

[Ozan Çağlayan]

On 30.01.2011 20:51, Larry Finger wrote:

> The nature of that Fn-F2 key depends on how the motherboard manufacturer coded
> their BIOS. Most do it as a toggle and use some WMI (Windows Management
> Interface) code to initialize it on boot up. As this no-name laptop is unlikely
> to have a WMI driver the way that name brands do, it probably generates a
> keystroke. That is easy to check - Use CTRL-ALT-F1 to switch to a console, log
> in, and issue the command "showkey". Is a keycode returned when Fn-F2 is pressed?

Hmm I've got it. So maybe taking look at the ACPI tables/WMI block can 
reveal a way to initialize the toggle? I'm not really experienced in 
these things but I'll take a look out of curiosity.

Thanks!


-- 
Pardus Linux
http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng

Re: Rfkill always soft/hard blocked upon boot

[Joey Lee]

Hi Ozan, 

於 日，2011-01-30 於 21:09 +0200，Ozan Çağlayan 提到：
> On 30.01.2011 20:51, Larry Finger wrote:
> 
> > The nature of that Fn-F2 key depends on how the motherboard manufacturer coded
> > their BIOS. Most do it as a toggle and use some WMI (Windows Management
> > Interface) code to initialize it on boot up. As this no-name laptop is unlikely
> > to have a WMI driver the way that name brands do, it probably generates a
> > keystroke. That is easy to check - Use CTRL-ALT-F1 to switch to a console, log
> > in, and issue the command "showkey". Is a keycode returned when Fn-F2 is pressed?
> 
> Hmm I've got it. So maybe taking look at the ACPI tables/WMI block can 
> reveal a way to initialize the toggle? I'm not really experienced in 
> these things but I'll take a look out of curiosity.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 

Does it possible share your machine's model name, dmidecode and
acpidump?


Thank's
Joey Lee

Re: Rfkill always soft/hard blocked upon boot

[Ozan Çağlayan]

On 31.01.2011 04:08, Joey Lee wrote:

> Does it possible share your machine's model name, dmidecode and
> acpidump?

Yes of course. I have the acpidump and dmidecode outputs but I could not 
extract the tables from the acpidump output. It gave an error about the 
table headers and their lengths.

This is a local (Turkish) brand laptop. The manufacturer is Casper. 
Model is Nirvana i7 (Casper Nirvana i7 CNTKI-620A). It can be an exact 
clone-copy of a popular laptop as it happens with these no-name stuff.

acpidump:
  http://bugs.pardus.org.tr/attachment.cgi?id=6673

dmidecode:
  http://bugs.pardus.org.tr/attachment.cgi?id=6674





-- 
Pardus Linux
http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng

Re: Rfkill always soft/hard blocked upon boot

[Joey Lee]

Hi Oza, 

於 一，2011-01-31 於 11:03 +0200，Ozan Çağlayan 提到：
> On 31.01.2011 04:08, Joey Lee wrote:
> 
> > Does it possible share your machine's model name, dmidecode and
> > acpidump?
> 
> Yes of course. I have the acpidump and dmidecode outputs but I could not 
> extract the tables from the acpidump output. It gave an error about the 
> table headers and their lengths.
> 

No, I CAN dump the tables from your acpidump result, you need:

(assume you save the dump result to acpidump-test.dat)
acpixtract acpidump-test.dat
iasl -d DSDT.dsl

> This is a local (Turkish) brand laptop. The manufacturer is Casper. 
> Model is Nirvana i7 (Casper Nirvana i7 CNTKI-620A). It can be an exact 
> clone-copy of a popular laptop as it happens with these no-name stuff.
> 
> acpidump:
>   http://bugs.pardus.org.tr/attachment.cgi?id=6673
> 
> dmidecode:
>   http://bugs.pardus.org.tr/attachment.cgi?id=6674
> 
> 

Sorry, I am not good for this platform, but will check your DSDT.


Thank's
Joey Lee
> 
> 
> 

Re: Rfkill always soft/hard blocked upon boot

[Ozan Çağlayan]

On 31.01.2011 12:21, Joey Lee wrote:
> Hi Oza,

>
> Sorry, I am not good for this platform, but will check your DSDT.

I dumped the _WDG block and find out that the GUIDs are exactly same 
with the following driver posted on Dec'2010 but not merged to upstream yet:

http://www.spinics.net/lists/platform-driver-x86/msg01075.html

I don't know if that driver will help in anything. I've asked the user 
if its other hotkeys are working or not.


-- 
Pardus Linux
http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng