Monthly Archive

Great title, I know.

If there’s something that needs to be done whenever you wake your computer from suspend, hibernate, or just before it suspends/hibernates, you can do it without too much difficulty if you know how to script.

The Madwifi driver for my Thinkpad’s wireless card doesn’t like to be suspended and I always had to reset it every time I awoke my computer. Annoying! So from several sources I have found that putting a script in /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/ would let me do this. However, they have to adhere to certain guidelines. First of all, you define what the script handles for each change (sleep/wake) in a single script. A bare Bash script that does this is as follows:

#!/bin/bash
case $1 in
    hibernate)
        ;;
    suspend)
        ;;
    thaw)
        ;;
    resume)
        ;;
    *)  echo "ERROR: called incorrectly."
        ;;
esac

This is pretty simple. Now just call whatever you need in the corresponding parts (thaw means wake from hibernation).
My wireless script (I didn’t bother with hibernation because I never use it) looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
case $1 in
    hibernate)
        ;;
    suspend)
	if [ -n "$(lsmod | grep ath_pci)" ]; then modprobe -r ath_pci; fi
        ;;
    thaw)
        ;;
    resume)
	if [ -z "$(lsmod | grep ath5k)" ]; then modprobe ath_pci; fi
        ;;
    *)  echo "ERROR: used incorrectly."
        ;;
esac

It checks to see if I’m using ath5k (which I do sometimes), and if I’m not loads/unloads ath_pci as necessary. Works like a charm.
Now there are two more steps. You have to save the file as ##something to tell pm-suspend when to call the script. The higher the number, the earlier the script will be called, so if your script depends on things being set up, it generally needs to be fairly low. I wanted mine to run before 55NetworkManager but after 75modules, so I named the file 57athpci.

Finally, set the file as executable by running chmod +x filename (so in my case chmod +x 57athpci). You’re all set.

I know this works in Fedora, and also ArchLinux (my tutorial is modified and personalized from their tutorial); any feedback on other distributions would be nice. (Especially Ubuntu).

I’ve heard that most people don’t have a problem with this, but I did. I have an AR5212 in my Thinkpad, and while ath5k works, it drops connections randomly, especially when the connection strength isn’t great to begin with.

This began to get very frustrating, so I slogged through a forum thread at FedoraForum.org. Despite being called lazy on multiple occasions (because someone is temperamental and I tend to overlook useful information if it’s not pointed out as being critical), I managed to get madwifi installed.

Madwifi must be recompiled every time the kernel updates. This is fine, as I tend to re-try ath5k each time the kernel updates as it seems to work better (better signal strength and comes back more reliably after I suspend the computer) besides the connection thing.

Anyhow, if you are having the same problem as me, this is the important stuff from the thread:

1. Download THIS SNAPSHOT OF MADWIFI because the others do not compile in F11.
2. As root,  yum -y install gcc gcc-c++ make kernel-devel
3. Untar the snapshot, compile it with “make” and install it with “make install” as root.
4. As root, do “rmmod ath5k && modprobe ath_pci” to enable madwifi. NetworkManager will disconnect and reconnect shortly.
5. If you want to keep this, add “blacklist ath5k” to the end of  /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf (again, as root)