[Optimus One, P500, V Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] fatchick1o9:
This post is actually part HOWTO and part Question / RFC

Hardware used:

LG Optimus V

Software used:

Bumblebee ROM 2.4

WiFi TXpower

Wireless Tether (for root users)

iwconfig

UAPick (to change the User Agent string in IE8 to avoid raising red flags with Virgin Mobile)

So I've been playing around with OP V and decided that it would be best for me to reduce my wifi TX power since I always us my wifi tether is close proximity to my laptop. Unfortunately, the ROM that I use does not come with the iwconfig tool necessary so I had to do a little fiddling around to get everything to work. So I figured I'd post here so you guys can review what I did and make any corrections if you think there is a better way to do this. And hopefully this info will help out some people that are newer at this than I am.

After I installed Bumblebee 2.4, I decided to play with the Tether APP that comes with it. I configured BB's tether and used UAPick to change IE8's UA string to the UA string from the Android Browser. It then occurred to me that my OPV was sitting ~2' away from my laptop and didn't to be transmitting at full power. So I started looking for APP to easily adjust the TX power. I happened upon WiFi TXpower in the android market and installed it. But it did not work because the Bumblebee ROM does not come with iwconfig.....hmmm....what to do what to do?

After many hours of Googling and reading forums I came to find out that I needed access to iwconfig to make WiFi TXpower work correctly. So I had to make a choice, 1) try downloading iwconfig and try to adb push iwconfig to /system/xbin and hope it works and that I can chmod the file correctly 2) install and APP that comes with iwconfig and symlink it into the /system/xbin dir.

Fortunately, I stumbled on a post in a forum that stated the APP Wireless Tether (for root users) comes with iwconfig and it allows for changing the TX power level in the APP (for hardware that supports TX adjustments). So I installed Wireless Tether (for root users) setup my Android for wi-fi tethering. I then proceeded to fire up my laptop and put it in my bedroom with the android phone on my kitchen table in order to test changing TX power levels and checking the change with my laptop.....SURE ENOUGH IT WORKS. Power level changes supported by the APP are as follows: disabled(no TX reduction)/3mW/5mW/10mW/15mW/20mW/25mW/30mW. The only problem is that the APP is rather large. 403KB for the .apk and ~.98MB when running on the Android. So onto the next step.

WiFi TXpower is pretty light weight @ 92KB supports the following power levels: 4/11/18/25/32 so all I need now is iwconfig to get it to work right. I decided to symlink iwconfig from the Wireless Tether (for root users) install dir instead of trying to adb push it. Here's what I did to symlink:

# adb shell

# echo $PATH

# mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /system /system

# ln -s /data/data/android.tether/bin/iwconfig /system/xbin/iwconfig

After that I fired up WiFi TXpower and now it works because the symlink worked. :D. I was just happy because it's been a long time since I made a symlink. :D

So now I would like some input form you guys here.

1) Is it possible for me to just unzip the Wireless Tether.apk and pull out the iwconfig then use adb to push the file into /system/xbin so that I don't have to install the whole APP package then create a symlink. If I do go that route will I have to chmod the iwconfig?

2) Could I just copy the iwconfig to /system/xbin from the install directory then uninstall the APP it came with.

3) Can I package the iwconfig (and possibly other wireless tools) into a zip that I can flash to the system from the Xionia recovery? This is how I would prefer to do it so that I have a simple package to load if I ever switch ROMs.

I'd greatly appreciate any feedback you could provide as to the best method and if I may have done this the long hard way or the right way. Although I am new to Android, I have been playing with linux on & off for the last 12+ years. It's just been ~2 years since my last outing with a full blown install that I could play with.

-eric

P.S. Thx to obijon for Bumblebee. I've been loving this ROM for the last couple weeks and having the Terminal Emulator app installed by default was VERY helpful to me in getting this WiFi TXpower / iwconfig thing worked out.