Home / ubuntu / Questions / 61060
In Process
Seppo Erviälä
Asked: 2011-09-13 02:41:28 +0800 CST

How not to enable bluetooth with hw-wireless switch?

  • 772

My laptop has hardware switch for enabling and disabling wireless adapters. This includes both bluetooth and wlan. I rarely use bluetooth and would like to keep it disabled (soft blocked) unless I manually enable it. Is this possible?

rfkill list when HW-switch disabled:

1: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: yes
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: yes

HW-switch enabled:

1: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
7: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

This is what I would like to have when HW-switch is enabled:

1: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

I have ThinkPad X61s with Ubuntu 11.04.

11.04

1 Answers

  1. To add a soft-block you would use the syntax:

    sudo rfkill block bluetooth

    To unblock:

    sudo rfkill unblock bluetooth

    Possibly, if the softblock isnt remembered after a reboot I think you can run this without sudo on Natty

    rfkill block bluetooth

    If the above works for you, you can add this as part of your start-up applications.

    • 3