Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

[jonathan9]

I have an HP dv5002 Centrino Duo notebook.

It has a light that turns on (and sometimes flashes) to indicate wifi activity.
This functioned correctly in dapper thru gutsy.

I just upgraded to hardy and the light is off all the time - even though the wifi and cutoff switch work correctly.

Any ideas?

TIA

Joe

[yulester]

Re: Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

The light on my Compaq hasn't worked right under Linux from day one - - I ignore it.

[toad]

Re: Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

ditto on a tp41 - I never bothered about the lights although there is supposed to be a way to get them to work. But why?

[TheFuzz4]

Re: Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

I got mine to start working after I installed the back ports module. I'm using a Dell Latitude D820

[jonathan9]

Re: Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

I have the backports repositories enabled. Can you tell me any more about exactly what you added to your sources list or what files fixed it?

[TheFuzz4]

Re: Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

That was all that I had to do in order for my wifi light to turn on. I'm using the latest kernel as well available through the updates version -19.

[jonathan9]

Re: Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

To Yulester and Toad,

I keep my wifi/modem (which is in another room) off when I'm not actually using it because the extra RF is not healthy for people. (I also turn off the cutoff switch on my notebook.) And sometimes my partner shuts it off without telling me. So, having the light work is really helpful. I run a few programs like miro that behave badly when the Internet is unavailable. Miro locks up and one other program generates a few error messages and then eventually locks up.

I know I can run Wireless Assistant or a command line utility to tell me if I'm online, but the indicator light is a lot more convenient.

[assettt]

Re: Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

Any more info about getting the lights to work. With my other card the lights were working normally (but no wpa ecyption) but with my Atheros card no lights but wpa on.

[yulester]

Re: Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

With any of the Atheros installs I had running (or somewhat running) the light on my laptop never functioned

- - - IF I get the madwifi on 8.04 hardy 64 bit up and running, I'll let you know if the light on my Compaq Presario f700 actually works. I kinda don't expect it too regardless.

[assettt]

Re: Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

Some info I received from nicedude at ubuntu forums
QUOTE=nicedude]LED's & Laptop soecial hotkeys ( like email & web keys etc. ) don't have very much support at all in linux. This is due to the PC makers not supporting Linux and not providing driver packages for these things. Please Email your PC maker and complain about lack of Linux support, while it they won't turn around and Email you back that they are making drivers it does let them know that their customers are using Linux more and more which will over time get them to start supporting Linux better and help this entire community. The PC makers just put their developement dollars where the people are ( as well as MS gets mad when they support Linux too much and so they need a real good reason to do so ). This alone is the best way we can all help Linux is by making PC manufacturers aware that people are switching OS's from MS and sooner or later they will start providing drivers ( like they do for MAC's ).

So in short unless you find an evil genius that has a way to enable these special keys or LED's for your exact model laptop, then you are probably sunk on LED support. But hey they are really not needed anyway as long as everything functions, if turning off your WIFI when not in use is the big issue you want to solve then here is a command to do so ( it will just turn your power level to zero which will do the trick )

replace ath0 with whatever your WIFI is called
sudo iwconfig ath0 txpower 0

to turn it back on redo the command but change the 0 to say 16 ( your adapters maximum power level might be different then mine but if it says not allowed then just reduce the number till it is allowed to find the max, could be higher than 16 though as that is just what mine will do yours could be different )


you could write 2 scripts one for on and one for off and do the exact same as the power button :-)

hope this helps

[jonathan9]

Re: Wifi Activity Light not working on Hardy

Light started working with upgrade to intrepid.
Now, I'm on jaunty and it works, but it shows all activity.

Be careful what you wish for:
The (literally as well as figuratively) "blinking" thing is on the hinge of my notebook right below the display smack dab in the center and very big and bright.
Now, it is extremely distracting.
I'll start another thread to see if there's anything that can be done about it.

Joe