On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 12:43 +0200, Marcel Holtmann wrote: > Hi Brian, > > > >> rfkill is *not* the mechanism to disable a specific card completely. > > > > > > Yes it is. > > > > > > A hardware switch is great. It is so more intuitive than any software > > > interface, since it just looks like the good old ON/OFF button that > > > everybody understands since they were three years old. By making one > > > single button act on multiple unrelated devices you try to make the > > > machine too clever and leave the fundamental ON/OFF analogy behind. > > > > It might be great if you actually have a hardware switch, a lot of > > machines do not. My laptop uses Fn-F2 and that disables Wi-Fi and > > Bluetooth simultaneously but not by cutting the power to them or by > > toggling an enable line to the radios. It does it by some sort of > > software mechanism. > > > > > > > This ON/OFF analogy is so fundamental that most users do not even > > > suspect it is an analogy! They simply think that the button is actually > > > hard-wired to the device. "Cool, a hardware button! Finally something > > > simple and reliable to switch off all this complex and buggy software!". > > > > Or "Damn! Why the hell can't I switch off my WiFi and leave my Bluetooth > > active so I can use my mouse?" > > that is actually the fault of the old RFKILL input stuff in the kernel. > It was wrong and we will be moving this to userspace. So you can > actually toggle between it with visual feedback to the user. > > Let me repeat, every RFKILL before the 2.6.31 kernel was a complete > cluster-fuck, heavily complicated and just plain wrong. Check the > linux-wireless mailing list archive if you have a day or so. There are > quite a few posts about it :)
And this is most of the reason why people have problems with NM's rfkill support. The reason why NM used global rfkill was that it was simply *impossible* to tie a specific rfkill switch to a specific wifi card with kernels before 2.6.31. It's still difficult, but no longer impossible. Dan _______________________________________________ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list