How I solved the wireless 'ipw2200 kill switch' problem

mixtr · 09-14-2006, 04:26 PM

I had this kill switch problem with the ipw2200 driver on my Dell laptop. The kill switch is hardware so no software can change it.
Searching the net I found:
- Doing 'echo > 0 rf_kill', doesn't work.

- I read that I should boot in Windows turn the wireless card off and then boot linux.

- Use a software, which doesn't work!

But here is what I found accidently...

Pressing Fn + F2 is suppose to turn the wireless card on/off but it wouldn't work on linux. I set conky to tail dmesg every minutes and I got an error message saying to use setkeycodes e008. To stop the annoyance I put setkeycodes e008 172 in my rc.local and just like that the wireless kill switch works. Pressing Fn + F2 change /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/*/rf_kill to 0 or 2.
I don't know why but I have a few guesses. What is important now is that the wireless card works, Fn + F2 works and I'm a happy camper

Info:
Slackware-current
ipw2200 driver from kernel 2.6.17
firmware v3.0 from ipw2200.sourceforge.net

Caeda · 09-15-2006, 05:26 PM

I have one of those wireless on/off keys. And also a screen brightness one. They work fine right out of the box in suse, but never work under other distros. This is probably the fix, but I find it annoying the other distro's don't have this enabled by default.

elektronaut · 11-20-2006, 11:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mixtr

Pressing Fn + F2 is suppose to turn the wireless card on/off but it wouldn't work on linux. I set conky to tail dmesg every minutes and I got an error message saying to use setkeycodes e008. To stop the annoyance I put setkeycodes e008 172 in my rc.local and just like that the wireless kill switch works. Pressing Fn + F2 change /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/*/rf_kill to 0 or 2.

Being still some kind of a newbie, I could need some additional information on this. I could enable/disable my wireless card in Ubuntu Edgy with

Code:

echo 0 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw3945/*/rf_kill
respectively
echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw3945/*/rf_kill

and I'm able to add a setkeycode command in rc.local. But which value should I assign it? I don't want to overwrite some other key. I'd like to use the special wifi switch at the front of my laptop, it's got keycode e055. How did you know that you have to use '172'? And how can I assign those two commands to one switch?

mixtr · 11-20-2006, 04:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elektronaut

Being still some kind of a newbie, I could need some additional information on this. I could enable/disable my wireless card in Ubuntu Edgy with

Code:

echo 0 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw3945/*/rf_kill
respectively
echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw3945/*/rf_kill

If you can put 1 in the rf_kill file it means your kill switch is software based, see http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/README.ipw3945 for more detail on your card

Quote:

and I'm able to add a setkeycode command in rc.local. But which value should I assign it? I don't want to overwrite some other key. I'd like to use the special wifi switch at the front of my laptop, it's got keycode e055. How did you know that you have to use '172'? And how can I assign those two commands to one switch?

You can set any number to your key, the general rules is translate your keycode from hex to dec and add 128 [055 = 85 + 128 = 213]. If you want to know if that number is assign, do dumpkeys | grep 213. Or you can just do dumpkeys and take an available number for setkeycode.

elektronaut · 11-21-2006, 09:41 AM

Thank you for answering, mixtr! I have another thread going on about this at ubuntuforums as I didn't want to get OT here. I would be glad if you could also give me some advice over there. Unfortunately, being an new member, I'm not allowed to post the URL to the thread. I will send it to you via PN, may be you can add it here for future solution seekers.

[EDIT:] The problem is solved, hopefully mixtr will paste the link to the thread here. You can read there how to activate your card if you have a software switch using a little script.

[EDIT2]: As I can post URL's now, comes the link to the thread.