My media center PC has a wireless network adapter and of cause a BIG blue light on the front of the PC.
As wireless network connection and a media center (with slow CPU) streaming movies is not a good combination I wanted to disable the wireless card.
To do that I used the command ifconfig.
First type:
$> ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:01:02:03:04:05:06 inet addr:192.168.0.153 Bcast:10.25.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::201:2eff:fe3b:c50f/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:154476 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:77817 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:168840925 (168.8 MB) TX bytes:5938729 (5.9 MB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1 RX packets:376 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:376 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:45071 (45.0 KB) TX bytes:45071 (45.0 KB) wlan0 Link encap:Wireless HWaddr 00:01:02:03:04:05:07 inet addr:192.168.0.153 Bcast:10.25.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::201:2eff:fe3b:c60f/64 Scope:Link BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
As you can see from the output I have 3 network adapters: eth0, lo, wlan0.
You might get other output, like eth1, lo, wlan0 etc.
I want to disable the wireless adapter: wlan0
At the command line I type:
$> sudo ifconfig wlan0 down [sudo] password for gopher:
Then the wireless adapter is disabled and the stupid blue light is gone!
To enable the wireless adapter again type:
$> sudo ifconfig wlan0 up [sudo] password for gopher:
Then the wireless adapter is enabled and the stupid blue light is on again!
To have the wireless adapter disabled every time the media center start add the command to the end of the file /etc/rc.local (before the exit 0).
Use a editor like nano or kate etc. to change the file.
$> sudo nano /etc/rc.local !/bin/sh -e # # rc.local # # This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel. # Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other # value on error. # # In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution # bits. # # By default this script does nothing. ifconfig wlan0 down exit 0
Now I just found that out after a suspend the wireless network adapter was enabled again.
To solve it I have to disable the wlan0 adapter during the resume. Create a file called /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom_wlan0
$> sudo nano /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom_wlan0
Add the following to the file:
# Script to disable wlan0 before suspend and restart after wake.
case "${1}" in
suspend|hibernate)
echo suspending 20_custom-wlan0
;;
resume|thaw)
echo Resumeing 20_custom-wlan0 - shutting down wlan0
ifconfig wlan0 down
;;
esac
Save the files and make sure is executable:
$> sudo chmod 755 /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom-wlan0
The file is named 20<something> because I want the file to called a relative late in resume process. On my system there is a file called 60<something> which enable the wireless network adapter and I want to disable it again.
To see the scripts called during the suspend process go through the log file:
/var/log/pm-suspend.log
Thats it, good luck 🙂
