Bug 11928

Summary:	ath5k gets lost with eeepc-laptop removal
Product:	Drivers	Reporter:	Rafael J. Wysocki (rjw)
Component:	network-wireless	Assignee:	Luis Chamberlain (mcgrof)
Status:	CLOSED CODE_FIX
Severity:	normal	CC:	lcapitulino, mcgrof
Priority:	P1
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	2.6.28-rc2	Subsystem:
Regression:	---	Bisected commit-id:

Description Rafael J. Wysocki 2008-10-31 14:58:18 UTC

Subject    : ath5k gets lost with eeepc-laptop removal
Submitter  : "Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino" <lcapitulino@mandriva.com.br>
Date       : 2008-10-31 13:05
References : http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=122545827204957&w=4
Handled-By : "Nick Kossifidis" <mickflemm@gmail.com>
Notify-Also : Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>
Notify-Also : Alan Jenkins <alan-jenkins@tuffmail.co.uk>

This entry is being used for tracking a regression from 2.6.27.  Please don't
close it until the problem is fixed in the mainline.

Comment 1 Matthew Garrett 2008-11-02 10:07:35 UTC

This is how the rfkill interface to the hardware behaves. It's not a bug.

Comment 2 Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino 2008-11-04 04:35:04 UTC

Matthew I see your point, but IMHO it doesn't seem acceptable to loose the device when the module is removed.

If it's not a bug we could at least have a workaround for it.

Comment 3 Matthew Garrett 2008-11-04 07:48:38 UTC

The only workaround would be for the rfkill core not to disable the radio on unregistration.

Comment 4 Henrique de Moraes Holschuh 2008-11-04 09:05:25 UTC

No way.  We will remain disabling the radio on unregister.  It is a safety thing.

It can be worked around in eeepc-laptop itself in various ways, although I would recommend against it.

You can have an in-driver flag that you can set before calling the unregister hook, to error out instead of disabling the radio in your toggle_radio() hook,
for example.  Or you could manually re-enable the radio in your driver after
unregistering (which is probably even more annoying than leaving it disabled).

If this was thinkpad-acpi, I would document the platform weirdness, add a DEVELOPER kconfig option to enable the "filter the unregister radio block command" functionality (so as to make it easier on people who need to keep loading/unloading the module) with a suitable printk to know it was enabled when requesting debug logs, and leave it at that.

Comment 5 Rafael J. Wysocki 2008-11-09 10:44:52 UTC

Notify-Also : Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino <lcapitulino@mandriva.com.br>

Comment 6 Rafael J. Wysocki 2008-11-09 12:50:54 UTC

On Sunday, 9 of November 2008, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> It shouldn't be listed as a regression.

Comment 7 Rafael J. Wysocki 2008-11-09 12:51:56 UTC

Dropping from the list of recent regressions.

Comment 8 Luis Chamberlain 2008-11-10 11:59:58 UTC

What's the status of this bug report? I fail to see agreement so far. Is it not an issue?

Comment 9 Luis Chamberlain 2008-11-14 18:23:00 UTC

Any updates? If not this should be closed....

Comment 10 Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino 2008-11-17 04:38:57 UTC

Well, I think it's up to Matthew to decide.

This doesn't bother me so much any more. If he thinks that this is not an issue this can be closed.

Comment 11 Luis Chamberlain 2008-12-01 15:05:43 UTC

Mathew?

Comment 12 Luis Chamberlain 2008-12-01 15:13:32 UTC

We've been wanting to help here but no replies yet so will be closing this. Please open the bug up if you decide it is and if so lets get to fixing it.