# [solved] ipw2200 (centrino) radio switch acer travelmate 292

## Darknight

Well, I have an hardware switch on my laptop to activate and deactivate the radio wireless device. However it seems there's more to it then the hardware switch. Windows is able to switch on the hardware while gentoo (until now) cannot. I have to boot in windows and then in linux to have it work. I couln't find any pointers about this problem. I'd like to have a way to switch radio on myself at boot, or at will, rather then using windows.Last edited by Darknight on Mon Jul 17, 2006 4:14 pm; edited 4 times in total

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## gen2fox

You need acerhk:

http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk/

Available in Portage:

http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=acerhk

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## Darknight

Seems to work like a charm, thanks!

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## gen2fox

Glad that I helped, I have the same laptop model btw, and it works very well with Linux.

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## Darknight

Uh... On a closer look it does not seem to work.

It seems like if I start windows first some kind of hardware/bios stuff is initialized, then the button works in linux without a problem, no driver needed whatsoever. But if I don't start windows I'm not going anywhere, the button gets detected by acerhk, I get warning in messages log, I map it, nothing happens at all thereafter. I have played a bit with the options, but to no avail.

Do you have any more ideas? Should I ask the author of the driver?

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## gen2fox

Hmm, no, don't know why it's not working for you, I got the info from this page when I configured my laptop:

http://perso.wanadoo.es/jtur/AcerTM290/acertravelmate290.html#wireless

This is all of what I can think of, sorry.

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## Darknight

I changed the subject so that maybe more people will look at this thread. To sum up:

```

cat /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/0000\:02\:02.0/rf_kill

2

```

ALWAYS this output if I start gentoo first, no matter what the kill switch position is!

I played with the sys inteface, I'm able to sw enable and disable the card but it's no-no when it comes to the hardware switch. The led stays dead  :Sad: 

However if I start windows before gentoo, everything works. acerhk or not, the hw switch behaves as a hw switch indeed, no need for acerhk AT ALL.

Right now I don't quite understand where the problem is anymore...

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## elestedt

I have the same driver as you - so I would guess and of course driver.

The switch works perfectly for me - so I'm wondering:

1. do you have ACPI compiled into the kernel (I had to have this for my fan to work - maybe it's related...)

2. is the driver a module or compiled into the kernel

3. are all the dependencies (not library dependencies in portage, but driver dependencies) kompiled as modules or into the kernel

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## Darknight

 *elestedt wrote:*   

> I have the same driver as you - so I would guess and of course driver.
> 
> The switch works perfectly for me - so I'm wondering:
> 
> 1. do you have ACPI compiled into the kernel (I had to have this for my fan to work - maybe it's related...)
> ...

 

1) Yes I do have acpi and it's working, I can poweroff using the power button for example, maybe I'm missing some features? I think I have compiled most of them

2) The driver is a module, how do I compile it into the kernel? I just emerged it and as far as I know this can only produce a module

3) They are modules as well

Which may bring to the question: how do I turn those modules into pieces of the compiled kernel?

A snippet from my modules.autoload.d/kernel2.6

```

ipw2200 led=1

ieee80211

ieee80211_crypt

ieee80211_crypt_wep

ieee80211_crypt_ccmp

ieee80211_crypt_tkip

acerhk force_series=290 usedritek=1

```

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## pflodo

I have an Acer Aspire 1680, and I found that while the LED in the button didn't come on and off (ie it was always off), it did turn the WLAN on and off.

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## elestedt

 *Darknight wrote:*   

>  *elestedt wrote:*   I have the same driver as you - so I would guess and of course driver.
> 
> The switch works perfectly for me - so I'm wondering:
> 
> 1. do you have ACPI compiled into the kernel (I had to have this for my fan to work - maybe it's related...)
> ...

 

I suppose that you could patch the kernel tree - and then in a make menuconfig you could select the module to be compiled into the kernel.

The drivers driver dependencies are stuff already available whn configuring the kernel - such as PCI suport  :Smile: 

all i do in my modules.autoload.d/kernel2.6 is

```
ipw2200
```

Where did you get the led=1 from?

The module loads the encryptions by itself doesn't it?

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## Darknight

 *pflodo wrote:*   

> I have an Acer Aspire 1680, and I found that while the LED in the button didn't come on and off (ie it was always off), it did turn the WLAN on and off.

 

I will try harder but it didn't work like that in my case, I should re-test everything but it's hard to tell if I missed something, I just need one command to have everything work after windows startup. The status I get off /sys is always the same unfortunately.Last edited by Darknight on Thu Jun 09, 2005 9:53 am; edited 1 time in total

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## Darknight

 *elestedt wrote:*   

> 
> 
> I suppose that you could patch the kernel tree - and then in a make menuconfig you could select the module to be compiled into the kernel.
> 
> The drivers driver dependencies are stuff already available whn configuring the kernel - such as PCI suport 
> ...

 

led=1 was in a german site, basically it said you need that in order to "wake up" the card, to have it understand that the hw switch is on, otherwise it wouldn't. Since it didn't work, I thought it wouldn't hurt to try, but didn's see any effect.

As I get it the encryption modules aren't loaded by themselves, but I'm no kernel expert, I just followed nice tutorials.

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## eltino

Isn't there somewhere in the BIOS where you can tell the wifi card to be always ON ?

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## Darknight

Unfortunately not, the bios is horribly poor. Nothing can be set except for the boot sequence and some other negligible things.

What makes me nuts is the fact that windows can activate it  :Mad: 

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## manouchk

I don't know if it applies to your laptop but on my compal CL56 I need to do that  :

modprobe acerhk usedritek=1 autowlan=1 force_series=290

echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled

in order to light up the LED.

In fact I don't know where to put the line :

echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled

...

maybe You need something like that (sorry if I missed something in the topic, I didn't read it entirely)

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## manouchk

well look there :

http://rfswitch.sourceforge.net/?page=laptop_matrix

same thing than compal CL56....

modprobe acerhk force_series=290 usedritek=1 verbose=1

echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled

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## Darknight

I feel ashamed because I forgot this old thread when I finally found a solution a couple of months ago   :Embarassed: 

I have made a script that basically does what manouchk suggests: modprobing the acerhk and wlan modules, then that echo to proc.

It works flawlessly, I then installed wpa supplicant and managed to use wireless lan  :Smile: 

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## manouchk

OK don't be too ashamed, noone died (I think  :Laughing:  )

where did you put the script and what it is ? 

It could help I'm a newby...

I don't know were to put the :

echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled

I think I can put 

"acerhk usedritek=1 autowlan=1 force_series=290"

directly in  /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 

right?

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## Darknight

Yes, parameters to modules can and should be put there if the module is automatically loaded. I load the wireless modules only if needed, so I have made a simple wireless-modules.sh text file with all the modprobe etc in it. Make it executable and run it as root ( ./wireless-modules.sh ), a script is really just that, a text file with a list of commands in it.

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