Yrurtj

When installing a Ubuntu, Manjaro or other Graphical Linux distro on laptop, when press the airplane mode button on laptop, Airplane mode can be enabled.

How the concept of airplane mode works in Linux distro?

Is it just a set of rule toward Bluetooth, and wifi and other wireless stuff?

Does the implementation of airplane mode control appears in window manager, network manager or x11 or somewhere else?

If there is a problem in airplane mode control what part should I focus to figure out the problem?

Is there any one who can provide a explanation (high level) of the mechanism of airplane mode control in a specific system (KDE/Linux, Gnome/Linux or the other common system)?

Is (Airplane mode) just a set of rule toward Bluetooth, and wifi and other wireless stuff?

Yes it just turns off networking. Read the Wikipedia artical.

Does the implementation of airmode control appears in window manager, network manager or x11 or somewhere else?

Desktop Environment.

If there is a problem in airmode control what part should I focus to figure out the problem?

It's a meta feature so you can ignore the issue and disable/enable networks directly.

Comments from Gnome, and KDE.

Mostly, "Airplane mode" means to disconnect any radio ("wireless") connections, AND stop sending any active probes to find possible connections.

On most Linux systems, Wi-Fi network connections are managed through NetworkManager. Other wireless network connection managers are available.

Additionally, there is a concept called RFKILL. RFKILL means to cut off a certain radio transmitter. In some cases, upper layers such as a Wi-Fi driver might recognize this, and return the specific error code ERFKILL, "Operation not possible due to RF-kill". For example the command iw dev wlp2s0 scan might return this error.

Airplane Mode in Gnome Shell, or other GUI systems, will activate RFKILL if the hardware supports it. However, your GUI might let you enable Airplane mode even if you do not have RFKILL controls for all your radios... Partly because the GUI cannot reliably tell the association between RFKILL controls and radio devices :-).

In Gnome shell, the Airplane mode button on the keyboard is just a keyboard shortcut to toggle Airplane mode. When Airplane mode is enabled, I can also see a button in the corner menu which allows to turn it back off.

Some other GUIs use nm-applet to provide their GUI for NetworkManager, including for Airplane mode.

Additionally, RFKILL might be a physical switch which the Operating System can only read, i.e. the hardware/firmware might not allow it to be overridden. This is called "hard rfkill". When the Operating System has control, it is called "soft rfkill".

As the above link explains, you can use the rfkill command. rfkill list, or simply rfkill, will let you see if a hard rfkill is active, and what the device name is.

You can also look in /sys/class/rfkill/. If you know how to inspect /sys/, you can find the name of the driver which exposes a given RFKILL control. E.g.

$ cd /sys/class/rfkill

$ ls

rfkill1  rfkill2  rfkill3  rfkill8

$ grep -H . */name

rfkill1/name:dell-wifi

rfkill2/name:dell-bluetooth

rfkill3/name:phy0

rfkill8/name:hci0

$ ls -l

total 0

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Apr  6 10:03 rfkill1 -> ../../devices/platform/dell-laptop/rfkill/rfkill1

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Apr  6 10:03 rfkill2 -> ../../devices/platform/dell-laptop/rfkill/rfkill2

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Apr  6 10:03 rfkill3 -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:02:00.0/ieee80211/phy0/rfkill3

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Apr  6 15:53 rfkill8 -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.3/1-1.3:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/rfkill8

$ readlink rfkill8

../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.3/1-1.3:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/rfkill8

$ cd rfkill8

$ readlink device

../../hci0

$ cd device

$ readlink driver

$ cd device

$ readlink driver

../../../../../../../bus/usb/drivers/btusb

$ cd driver

$ readlink module

../../../../module/btusb

Historically, the most common problem with Airplane mode is that you accidentally enabled Airplane mode e.g. by pressing a button. Then your Wi-Fi does not work, and you might not know why or how to fix it. However, my current Gnome shell is pretty good about soft rfkill. If Airplane mode is enabled, the Wi-Fi menu shows "Wi-Fi off". Clicking on "select a network" in the Wi-Fi menu shows a big notice that Airplane mode is enabled, and gives you a button to immediately disable Airplane mode.