Disable wlan on boot
 

Hello,

I'm a fresh N900 owner and quite happy with it. I've installed the famous wifi-switcher and wanted to disable wlan on boot per default as I don't use it very much.

My first try to was to write an upstart event to "start after started wlancond" and then call wifi-switcher's "wifi.sh" to disabled it.

wlancond is not happy with that and respawns quite often until it is blocked by upstart's respawn protection. Adding a "sleep 10" (...) before calling wifi.sh worked around the issue.

So I found another way to do this:
- echo "blacklist wl12xx" >>/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
- edit "/etc/event.d/wlancond" and comment out the
"start on started hildon-desktop" line. No wlancond on boot
- edit "/etc/event.replace.d/wlancond" and comment out the
"start on started hildon-desktop" line. No wlancond on boot

-> wlan is now completly disabled on boot and can be enabled normally using the wifi-switcher.

Is the assumption correct that an unloaded wl12xx module
sucks less battery than just disabled wlan?
Atleast wifi-switcher also unloads the module.

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

hi
i would like to do that too
the question is how?
i mean i dont understand exactly what you did
could you explain it further like for a total linux noob?
thanks

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

bump...anyone??

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

Why don't you just deactivate the wireless interface:
ifconfig wlan0 down

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

I'll give that a try. Hopefully that will stick between boots.

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

I think it will come back up on the reboot....
if you have qbw, add this command on startup..

PS : you probab need to sudo it

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

Quick Q: does disabling the WLAN-module improve batterylife?

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

if you want a command started each boot why dont you write a script for that command and put it in the /etc/event.d

just like the swappolube application you have to insert a line

start on started hildon-desktop

to make it start everytime you reboot

i'm just saying this based on my little knowledge of linux, sorry if this may not help

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

Unlikely, methinks. This is a mobile chip and it's likely it draws as little power as possible if not in use. With auto-search for WLAN off there should be no visible improvement.

Besides, whet you do is unload the module, not powering down the chip. The chip shouldn't know the module is down unless loading it activates it somehow and keeps it up. It would be a bad thing to do on a battery powered device.

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

I want wifi switcher to do this too, like the SSH Status does, turning off SSH on boot.

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

disabling wlan greatly improves battery life on my N900

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

Hi, king, welcome to the forums. This is an old thread (check dates before posting). Disabling WLAN does improve battery life, the question was about unloading the module versus simply disabling it via settings.

Also, this has already been integrated into MaeModder as an option to not power up WLAN on boot.

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

@ndi I disagree. with wlan switched off i get a reasonable bat life
@zero2cool. ssh? slightly off topic

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

what on earth is maemodder?

Re: Disable wlan on boot
 

Maemodder is an app that helps people who can't search forums for settings. It integrates some mods and some gconf setting under one roof. As Google suggests.

Also, you didn't read the post you were contradicting. It clearly states "Disabling WLAN does improve battery life".