Subject: Re: wpi(4) and transmitter being off
To: None <degroote@NetBSD.org>
From: Stephen Borrill <netbsd@precedence.co.uk>
List: tech-net
Date: 08/08/2007 10:51:25
On Wed, 8 Aug 2007, degroote@NetBSD.org wrote:
> [snip]
>> Yes, spotted that.
>>
>> After having worked out that "ifconfig wpi0 up" would switch the
>> interface into RUNNING iff the transmitter was on, I was able to at least
>> print a message at boot time giving a count down asking for the
>> transmitter button to be pressed. So it's liveable with (and I'll be
>> asking my OEM supplier about enabling the transmitter by default), but
>> not ideal.
>>
>> If we can get the transmitter is on signal, that's going to be great too.
>>
>
> Can you test the following patch. It tests the status of the transmitter
> when we init the card and improve off->on transition.

N.B. I've not tested this yet.

At a quick glance, this appears to keep the interface in the running state 
when the transmitter is off. RUNNING vs not is the only way I can think of 
for userland to detect whether the transmitter is on or not, i.e. this 
patch will improve the reporting as far as I can see in dmesg (yes, I 
_could_ parse that for transmitter state), but will make it _more_ 
difficult to prompt the user to switch it on. Perhaps an ioctl or sysctl 
to retrieve the transmitter state?

-- 
Stephen