Enabling a wifi LED

[Anne Wilson]

On Wednesday 14 January 2009 16:32:53 Scott Robbins wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 04:03:19PM +0000, Anne Wilson wrote:
> > On http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Acer_Aspire_One it is said that the wifi
> > LED can be activated by adding these two lines to /etc/sysctl.conf:
> >
> > dev.wifi0.ledpin = 3
>
> That was for the 2.6.26.x kernel. It no longer works with 2.6.27 kernel.
>
> >and it goes on to say that this works with both F9 and F10.
>
> If you're using the ath5k driver included with the kernel, you won't be
> able to get those values in the 2.6.27 kernel.  Whether MadWifi's
> drivers add the sysctl variables, I'm not sure, I would have to check.
>
> You'll get an error that there's no such sysctl option.  It seems to not
> be in the 2.6.27 vanilla kernel either.
>
OK, thanks.

> On the other hand, we got ath5k in that kernel, so it was a more than
> even tradeoff IMHO
>
> In Ubuntu's 2.6.28 kernel, it seems to be back.  A quick try on Fedora's
> rawhide, however, indicates that Fedora doesn't have it.
>
> However, Ubuntu pulled ath5k support out of their
> kernels--I'd much rather they had left that in, though it's easy enough
> to fix with backports.  If I have to choose one or the other, I'd rather
> have the module right there.
>
> Although some people mentioned that they got better results with MadWifi
> than the ath5k module, I haven't found that to be the case.
>
That may be hardware dependent, of course.  I do have one, fairly serious 
issue, but at this stage I'm suspecting that it's hardware, not driver.  I'll 
do a bug report if it warrants it, but right now I'm still collecting 
information/evidence.

> FWIW, getting that working just gives an annoying amber flashing during
> wireless activity.  I quickly turned it off, though of course, some
> people like flashing lights.  :)
>
I don't like flashing lights, but I do like to know that wifi is activated - 
there's that toggle switch that gives you no other indication of its status.

> > However, it's not
> > clear whether it only works with the madwifi driver.
>
> As mentioned above, that I don't know--I would have to test that and
> see, but I do know that if you use the ath5k driver, the sysctl values
> aren't there.
>
> > However, I need to be sure that I'm not going to do any harm by trying
> > this.
>
> I'm not sure what happens if an unknown variable is in sysctl.conf.  I
> usually did it on the fly with
>
> sysctl -w dev.wifi0.ledpin=3
> sysctl -w dev.wifi0.softled=1
>
Thanks, everyone for the answers.  Not what I wanted to hear, but I'd rather 
have it 'from the horse's mouth' :-)

Anne
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