Documentation/driver-api/rfkill.rst
Source file repositories/reference/linux-study-clean/Documentation/driver-api/rfkill.rst
File Facts
- System
- Linux kernel
- Corpus path
Documentation/driver-api/rfkill.rst- Extension
.rst- Size
- 5154 bytes
- Lines
- 133
- Domain
- Support Tooling And Documentation
- Bucket
- Documentation
- Inferred role
- Support Tooling And Documentation: documentation
- Status
- atlas-only
Why This File Exists
Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
- Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
- Defines or uses C structs; map object ownership, embedded links, reference counts, and lock ownership.
Dependency Surface
- No C-style include directives detected by the generator.
Detected Declarations
- No top-level syscall, struct, function, initcall, or export declaration detected by the generator.
Annotated Snippet
===============================
rfkill - RF kill switch support
===============================
.. contents::
:depth: 2
Introduction
============
The rfkill subsystem provides a generic interface for disabling any radio
transmitter in the system. When a transmitter is blocked, it shall not
radiate any power.
The subsystem also provides the ability to react on button presses and
disable all transmitters of a certain type (or all). This is intended for
situations where transmitters need to be turned off, for example on
aircraft.
The rfkill subsystem has a concept of "hard" and "soft" block, which
differ little in their meaning (block == transmitters off) but rather in
whether they can be changed or not:
- hard block
read-only radio block that cannot be overridden by software
- soft block
writable radio block (need not be readable) that is set by
the system software.
The rfkill subsystem has two parameters, rfkill.default_state and
rfkill.master_switch_mode, which are documented in
admin-guide/kernel-parameters.rst.
Implementation details
======================
The rfkill subsystem is composed of three main components:
* the rfkill core,
* the deprecated rfkill-input module (an input layer handler, being
replaced by userspace policy code) and
* the rfkill drivers.
The rfkill core provides API for kernel drivers to register their radio
transmitter with the kernel, methods for turning it on and off, and letting
the system know about hardware-disabled states that may be implemented on
the device.
The rfkill core code also notifies userspace of state changes, and provides
ways for userspace to query the current states. See the "Userspace support"
section below.
When the device is hard-blocked (either by a call to rfkill_set_hw_state()
or from query_hw_block), set_block() will be invoked for additional software
block, but drivers can ignore the method call since they can use the return
value of the function rfkill_set_hw_state() to sync the software state
instead of keeping track of calls to set_block(). In fact, drivers should
use the return value of rfkill_set_hw_state() unless the hardware actually
keeps track of soft and hard block separately.
Kernel API
==========
Drivers for radio transmitters normally implement an rfkill driver.
Platform drivers might implement input devices if the rfkill button is just
Annotation
- Atlas domain: Support Tooling And Documentation / Documentation.
- Implementation status: atlas-only.
Implementation Notes
- This generated page is the file-by-file coverage layer; curated subsystem chapters should link here when they synthesize a multi-file control flow.
- Core OS pages should be promoted from atlas-only to deep-reviewed when they explain data structures, invariants, locking, lifecycle, and C implementation snippets.
- Driver-family pages are intentionally pattern-oriented unless they are part of the selected PCIe/NVMe representative device path.