rfkill state is not restored on reboot

[Adam Groszer]

1. Disable bluetooth via applet.
2. Reboot.
3. Login.
4. Observe bluetooth is re-enabled!

For fun having

rfkill block bluetooth

in rc.local does not work either

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: rfkill 0.5-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-27.32-generic 4.2.8-ckt1
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-27-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Sun Feb 21 13:37:39 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-05-17 (1010 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64 (20130423.1)
SourcePackage: rfkill
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This is now handled by the systemd package (/lib/systemd/systemd-rfkill; /lib/systemd/system/rfkill.service). And yes, it is buggy from what I can see.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

This still seems to be a problem on Ubuntu 19.04. Ie, if I do:

$ sudo systemctl status systemd-rfkill
● systemd-rfkill.service - Load/Save RF Kill Switch Status
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-rfkill.service; static; vendor preset:
...

$ rfkill block bluetooth
$ rfkill
ID TYPE DEVICE SOFT HARD
 0 wlan phy0 unblocked unblocked
 1 bluetooth hci0 blocked unblocked
$ sudo reboot

Then I get:

$ rfkill
ID TYPE DEVICE SOFT HARD
 0 wlan phy0 unblocked unblocked
 1 bluetooth hci0 unblocked unblocked

and I can see that the state files in /var/lib/systemd/rfkill were not updated as part of the reboot:

$ cat /var/lib/systemd/rfkill/*bluetooth
0

However, I can workaround this manually by running 'sudo /lib/systemd/systemd-rfkill' prior to reboot myself:

$ rfkill block bluetooth
$ rfkill
ID TYPE DEVICE SOFT HARD
 0 bluetooth hci0 blocked unblocked
 1 wlan phy0 unblocked unblocked
$ sudo /lib/systemd/systemd-rfkill
$ cat /var/lib/systemd/rfkill/*bluetooth
1
$ reboot
$ rfkill
ID TYPE DEVICE SOFT HARD
 0 bluetooth hci0 blocked unblocked
 1 wlan phy0 unblocked unblocked
$ cat /var/lib/systemd/rfkill/*bluetooth
1

In this manner, I can at least have bluetooth in a predictable state. However, the desirable behavior is likely to have the current state preserved across reboots. Looking at /lib/systemd/system/systemd-rfkill.service, it appears all that is missing is an ExecStop=/lib/systemd/systemd-rfkill....

[Dan Streetman (ddstreet)]

please reopen if this is still an issue