RFC: Possible fix for wireless issue / Power consumption?

Nelson Castillo arhuaco at freaks-unidos.net
Wed Jul 1 23:21:16 CEST 2009


budfive has submitted a fix for the wireless issue.

https://docs.openmoko.org/trac/ticket/2277#comment:18
https://docs.openmoko.org/trac/attachment/ticket/2277/wifi_ifupdown.patch

"One obvious potential downside with this is that since we're no longer
cleaning up at "ifconfig down", an inactive driver can still use power
needlessly. I did some tests, and while I do see this extra power usage, it
looks like it's inconsequential".

*** ar6000_close castrated
   | phone off doing nothing                      | 101mA |
   | insmod ar6000.ko                             | 103mA |
   | ifconfig eth0 up                             | 103mA |
   | ifconfig eth0 down                           | 103mA |
   | connect (ifconfig up, iwconfig, udhcpc, etc) | 105mA |
   | ifconfig eth0 down                           | 105mA |
   | rmmod                                        | 100mA |

*** ar6000_close unmodified
   | ifconfig eth0 up                             | 103mA |
   | ifconfig eth0 down                           | 102mA |
   | rmmod                                        | 101mA |
   | unbind                                       | 96mA  |

Timo(lindi-) has confirmed that this patch works well for him.

Is there a reason for not having this fix in the latest OM kernel?

It seems this is an important issue that has delayed the adoption of
the latest kernel by many users.



More information about the openmoko-kernel mailing list