How to stop the blinking wifi LED on Ubuntu laptops with Intel wireless cards
2010-07-21 update at the bottom of the post. This post was written for Karmic but apparently still works in Natty.
Apparently Intel, in all of their brilliance, have decided that people using Ubuntu (and Linux in general) on laptops with an Intel wireless card simply must know when data is being transferred over wireless. It is of such paramount importance that you know this that Intel has decided to alert you by constantly blinking the wifi LED whenever data is being transferred. I think every other wireless card on the planet just has a solid LED light to indicate the wireless is on (or off, using the physical switch), but no, that’s not good enough for Intel. (Can you guess that the blinking light really annoys me?)
There’s no easy-to-find setting to change the LED to solid. But there is a solution: create a little script to change the LED to solid whenever you connect to a new wireless network. It’s pretty easy to do, too. Here we go:
- Create a new file using Nano:
user@computer:$ sudo nano /etc/network/if-up.d/wifi-led-noblink
- Paste the following into your new file using ctrl+shift+v:
#!/bin/sh
#this script will prevent the wifi light from blinking when on.
#to activate this script, create a soft link to it in /etc/network/if-up.d/
echo none > /sys/class/leds/iwl-phy0::RX/trigger
echo none > /sys/class/leds/iwl-phy0::TX/trigger
echo none > /sys/class/leds/iwl-phy0::radio/trigger
echo none > /sys/class/leds/iwl-phy0::assoc/triggerPress ctrl+x to quit Nano, then y to save your script.
-
Make the script executable:
user@computer:$ sudo chmod u+x /etc/network/if-up.d/wifi-led-noblink
That’s it! Next time you connect to a network, your wifi LED should remain solid. This works in Karmic. And next time you find yourself cursing the guys at Intel, just remember: at least you don’t have a Broadcom wireless card!
2010-07-21 Update!
As of kernel 2.6.34 this solution no longer works for me. However, commenter DM has suggested an alternative that does seem to work again.
- Create a new file using Nano:
user@computer:$ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/wlan.conf
- Paste the following into your new file using ctrl+shift+v:
#1 means do not blink
options iwlcore led_mode=1Press ctrl+x to quit Nano, then y to save your script.
- Restart your laptop.
This different solution should work if the above solution doesn’t.
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Thank you! This worked like a charm in a Hp nx7300 laptop.
Worked great for my 8530w. Other “solutions” didn’t, but yours did. Man, that was annoying! Thank you!
Thanks a lot!! Woow… The blinking led was driving me crazy
.
Thanks a lot.
Great solution for a annoying problem.
Thank you so much! Worked like a bomb on my HP 8710w, was really driving me nuts!
Thanks a lot!! Woow… The blinking led was driving me crazy
.
Thanks, mate.
Worked great on my inspiron under Lucid.
thanks a lot mate. it worked great on my HP g60. It was quite annoying.
Great solution. worked right away on my HP dv3 running ubuntu 10.04. Thx!
works great on compaq presario a900. using ubuntu 10.04
My solution is to add the following in /etc/modprobe.d/99-local.conf (it’s opensuse 11.3; for other distributions, I think it is /etc/modprobe.d/options):
options iwlcore led_mode=1
For more info: modinfo iwlcore
Thanks DM, that also seems to work. The file to put it in for Ubuntu is /etc/modprobe.d/wlan.conf
(options.conf works too, it doesn’t matter).
Using a Dell E4200 with an Intel 5100 wifi card. This killed wifi till I rm’d the wlan.conf file.
I suppose I should add I’m using lucid.
Second solution works fine on ubuntu 10.04.
Thanks a lot!
The first solution worked on my HP Compaq nw8440. Thank you, that was a major annoyance.
Stopped my wifi too, how do I remove the wlan.conf file?
Thank you Alex. Your “2010-07-21 Update!” worked on my Dell inspiron E1505 running Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat (10.10)
Thanks! The revised code worked on 10.10 for my Intel card in my HP dv2700.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Second solution worked on 10.10.
Thanks! My HP nx9420 is now a different machine without the Wifi annoying blinking led…
Thanks this works on HP-530 Notebook, Ubuntu 10.10
Thank you!! The update worked on my Dell D620 with Fedora 14.
Thank you very much for your solutions!
The second work on Hp notebook dv2760el, ubuntu 10.10.
Thanks a lot! Your second solution worked on Fedora 14.
This was amazingly helpful. It solved my Ubuntu wi-fi blinking disaster. What was Intel thinking?
Especially because the button is ‘touch’ you could no longer disable it just by touching it because it was on a blinking frenzy.
Thanks! Second solution worked on Dell Inspiron 6400; Ubuntu 10.10.
The second variant works perfectly on a HP EliteBook 2530p under 10.10. Thanks!
Perfect!
Ubuntu 10.10
Dell Latitude D630
No more blinking blinking LED, thank you Alex!!!
(Ubuntu 10.10 64bit, Thinkpad T410)
[...] Alex Cabal found a solution for Karmic, and his updated solution also works for Natty. His solution describes opening a text [...]
Thanks for this, works perfectly on Natty too!
If you want to avoid rebooting you can do ‘modprobe -r iwlagn && modprobe iwlagn’ instead, which simply reloads the module.
Second solution worked great on the HP2530p
Thanks to all!
For Ubuntu 11.10 replace iwlcore with iwlagn in the line above, so that it reads:
options iwlagn led_mode=1
Upgraded today to Ubuntu 11.10
Flashing wifi LED is back
Vainly tried above 2 solutions
Ubuntu 11.10
Dell Latitude D630
Thanks Matt, on 11.10, “iwlagn” did the trick.
How is it possible that somebody on the Ubuntu side had this “brilliant” idea of the blinking wifi LED ? That’s madness. And moreover it’s quite complicated to deactivate (when you don’t know this exact parameter).
As times passes : Ubuntu becomes worse and worse. I’m seriously considering all my Linux boxes to something else.
For me, using “wlagn” instead of “iwlcore” did not work on Ubuntu 11.10. I used “iwl_legacy” instead which did work. Apparently, iwlcore is renamed since kernel 3.0
instead of restarting you can also
# rmmod iwlcore
# modprobe iwlcore
in kernel 3.0 this module is called iwlwifi, so you have to change iwlcore to iwlwifi if youre using kernel 3.0 and above
For Ubuntu 12.04:
$ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf
paste
options iwlwifi led_mode=1
Then reboot your laptop / reload module.
(Source: http://www.emmolution.org/?p=235)
Was looking into the blinking wifi led on a dell D630 running fedora 16 and found the led_mode option for the module iwlegacy:
cat <> /etc/modprobe.d/solid_led.conf
option iwlegacy led_mode=1
EOF