[luv-main] Disabling wifi on laptop
Hi, I've recently purchased a Dell vostro 3350 laptop, and to save battery, I was planning to disable wifi, when it wasn't required. On my old laptop I could use the rfkill package like so: rfkill block wifi But it seems to have no effect on my Dell. The wifi hot key on the laptop does not seem to work either (from the console). Does anyone have any other ideas? If I do ifdown eth1 to bring down wifi, is it likely the wifi will still be consuming significant battery? Thanks for any help, Dan
Daniel Dalton <d.dalton@iinet.net.au> wrote:
But it seems to have no effect on my Dell. The wifi hot key on the laptop does not seem to work either (from the console).
Is there a hardware switch somewhere on the laptop, perhaps underneath, to turn the wifi on and off? On my Lenovo laptop, there is a switch. If it's off and you try to bring up the wireless interface, you get the most obscure error message that I've read in a very long time.
On 9 October 2011 12:04, Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:
Daniel Dalton <d.dalton@iinet.net.au> wrote:
But it seems to have no effect on my Dell. The wifi hot key on the laptop does not seem to work either (from the console).
Is there a hardware switch somewhere on the laptop, perhaps underneath, to turn the wifi on and off? On my Lenovo laptop, there is a switch. If it's off and you try to bring up the wireless interface, you get the most obscure error message that I've read in a very long time.
I had the same thought and was just looking at the manuas on the Dell web site. As far as I can see there isn't one. There's a group of three buttons on the right above the keyb and the left most of those is labelled "Windows Mobility Center" which may be the closest but of course is not likely to work under linux. It looks like one of those soft-keys rather than a switch. -- Colin Fee tfeccles@gmail.com
Colin Fee <tfeccles@gmail.com> wrote:
I had the same thought and was just looking at the manuas on the Dell web site. As far as I can see there isn't one. There's a group of three buttons on the right above the keyb and the left most of those is labelled "Windows Mobility Center" which may be the closest but of course is not likely to work under linux. It looks like one of those soft-keys rather than a switch.
I think there's a daemon available that can be configured to run a script when a specified soft key is pressed. I don't know whether these particular keys are supported; the script would have to do the closest thing to temporarily disabling wifi that can be done.
On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 01:30:30PM +1100, Jason White wrote:
Colin Fee <tfeccles@gmail.com> wrote:
I had the same thought and was just looking at the manuas on the Dell web site. As far as I can see there isn't one. There's a group of three buttons on the right above the keyb and the left most of those is labelled "Windows Mobility Center" which may be the closest but of course is not likely to work under linux. It looks like one of those soft-keys rather than a switch.
I think there's a daemon available that can be configured to run a script when a specified soft key is pressed. I don't know whether these particular keys are supported; the script would have to do the closest thing to temporarily disabling wifi that can be done.
Yes, this could be useful for a range of things, but ultimately I'd still need to find a command to disable wifi.. Cheers, Dan
On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 12:17:12PM +1100, Colin Fee wrote:
On 9 October 2011 12:04, Jason White <[1]jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:
Daniel Dalton <[2]d.dalton@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> But it seems to have no effect on my Dell. The wifi hot key on the > laptop does not seem to work either (from the console).
Is there a hardware switch somewhere on the laptop, perhaps underneath, to turn the wifi on and off? On my Lenovo laptop, there is a switch. If it's off and you try to bring up the wireless interface, you get the most obscure error message that I've read in a very long time.
Not that I'm aware of just soft keys... I believe fn+f2 was wifi toggle, but I could be wrong. Cheers, Dan
Daniel Dalton <d.dalton@iinet.net.au> wrote:
But it seems to have no effect on my Dell. The wifi hot key on the laptop does not seem to work either (from the console).
Is there a hardware switch somewhere on the laptop, perhaps
underneath,
to turn the wifi on and off? On my Lenovo laptop, there is a switch. If it's off and you try to bring up the wireless interface, you get the most obscure error message that I've read in a very long time.
I was lead to believe that all wireless devices were required to have a switch to disable the wireless for situations where it was required (eg on an airplane). I can't find any evidence to back that up though so maybe I imagined it. Disabling the wireless using the wireless button also disables Bluetooth on my laptop which is not always what I want... Additionally, my wifi automatically turns off when I plug in an Ethernet cable (which is a good feature to have on a network with hundreds of laptops otherwise you end up with double the number of DHCP reservations). I assume a loopback Ethernet plug would have the same effect... (to the OP) Do you know if your wireless is internally PCI or USB connected? James
On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 03:08:27PM +1100, James Harper wrote:
(to the OP) Do you know if your wireless is internally PCI or USB connected?
Well, it's just internal wifi (inside the laptop), so I presume it
would be the
first option?
You're probably right. I guess I'm just showing my age - the wifi in my first laptop was in the screen and connected via an internal USB but I suppose it wouldn't make sense to do it that way these days. James
James Harper <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au> wrote:
On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 03:08:27PM +1100, James Harper wrote:
(to the OP) Do you know if your wireless is internally PCI or USB connected?
Well, it's just internal wifi (inside the laptop), so I presume it
would be the
first option?
You're probably right. I guess I'm just showing my age - the wifi in my first laptop was in the screen and connected via an internal USB but I suppose it wouldn't make sense to do it that way these days.
True, but Bluetooth is a different matter. On my laptop, at least, it appears as a USB device, if I recall correctly.
On Sun, 9 Oct 2011, Daniel Dalton <d.dalton@iinet.net.au> wrote:
But it seems to have no effect on my Dell. The wifi hot key on the laptop does not seem to work either (from the console). Does anyone have any other ideas? If I do ifdown eth1 to bring down wifi, is it likely the wifi will still be consuming significant battery?
It doesn't seem likely that a Wifi device will consume any amount of power that compares to the backlight on a 15" display, a modern CPU that's doing almost anything, or a spinning hard disk. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 12:29:01PM +1100, Russell Coker wrote:
It doesn't seem likely that a Wifi device will consume any amount of power that compares to the backlight on a 15" display, a modern CPU that's doing almost anything, or a spinning hard disk.
Fair point, I'll probably not persist much more with it in that case then... Although, it isn't a huge problem, would unloading the relevant module from the kernel help at all? Cheers, Dan
Daniel Dalton wrote:
Hi,
I've recently purchased a Dell vostro 3350 laptop, and to save battery, I was planning to disable wifi, when it wasn't required. On my old laptop I could use the rfkill package like so: rfkill block wifi
But it seems to have no effect on my Dell. The wifi hot key on the laptop does not seem to work either (from the console). Does anyone have any other ideas? If I do ifdown eth1 to bring down wifi, is it likely the wifi will still be consuming significant battery?
Some (esp. cheap) laptops have wifi and bt modules as simple dongles inside the case; you can open the case and physically unplug them.
On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 12:33:15PM +1100, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Daniel Dalton wrote:
I was planning to disable wifi, when it wasn't required. On my old laptop I could use the rfkill package like so: rfkill block wifi
But it seems to have no effect on my Dell. The wifi hot key on the laptop does not seem to work either (from the console). Does anyone have any other ideas? If I do ifdown eth1 to bring down wifi, is it likely the wifi will still be consuming significant battery?
Some (esp. cheap) laptops have wifi and bt modules as simple dongles inside the case; you can open the case and physically unplug them.
Definitely, although I do use wifi fairly frequently, so the practicalities would probably outweigh the benefits... Cheers, Dan
On Sunday 09 October 2011 11:51:14 Daniel Dalton wrote:
I've recently purchased a Dell vostro 3350 laptop, and to save battery, I was planning to disable wifi, when it wasn't required
Whilst not being of direct help this LWN article about a talk by Matthew Garrett on platform drivers may shed some light on the underlying reasons on why supporting these sorts of things can be rather tricky.. http://lwn.net/Articles/456146/ cheers! Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC This email may come with a PGP signature as a file. Do not panic. For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPGP
participants (7)
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Chris Samuel -
Colin Fee -
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James Harper -
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Russell Coker -
Trent W. Buck