Re: Ubuntu, NM, nm-applet, bcm43xx and acerhk on Acer Aspire SOLUTION (partial):

[Olivier Blin <oblin mandriva com>]

Mike <michael doube net> writes:

> What also works is the following (on Ubuntu Dapper, up to date packages):
> 1) Boot up with NetworkManager, nm-applet and acerhk running
> 2) Disable networking from the right-click nm-applet menu
> 3) run this:
>  sudo modprobe -r bcm43xx; sudo modprobe bcm43xx; echo 1 >
> /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled
> 4) Enable networking from the right-click nm-applet menu

It doesn't look like a viable solution.
Doing this at boot time is probably better, for example with install
commands in /etc/modprobe.conf :
remove bcm43xx /sbin/modprobe -r acerhk; /sbin/modprobe --first-time -r --ignore-remove bcm43xx
install bcm43xx /sbin/modprobe acerhk; echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled; /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install bcm43xx

Though, it's not really easy to automate this at a distro level, it's
hard to guess if a system needs the acerhk module, and which
options it should be given.

A laptop rfswitch matrix [1] is available, but a configuration tool
would require a reproductible way to detect the systems.
The acerhk module basically greps for a known models list in the BIOS
memory, so it could de done with dmidecode. But some systems [2] don't
report correctly their manufacturer and product name...

[1] http://rfswitch.sourceforge.net/?page=laptop_matrix
[2] http://cvs.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/soft/ldetect-lst/trunk/test/dmidecode.Laptop.Compal-CL56?root=svn&view=markup
or https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/CompalCL56/DMIDecode

-- 
Olivier Blin - Mandriva