Thanks to Reuben Caron for pointing out on the OLPC developer’s mailing list that you can turn off the mesh networking using the following standard command:
echo 0 > /sys/class/net/eth1/lbs_mesh
This is nice because you probably just use regular wireless and don’t use or require mesh networking at all, so you might as well turn it off and save some power and complexity.
More details on the other ways you can control the mesh network via the firmware are in Trac.
This solution only works, AFAIK, if there is already an entry in./sys/class/net/eth0 for lbs_mesh. Otherwise, since the items in the /sys hierarchy are not actual files, you’ll get a permissions error when you try to create the lbs_mesh file, e.g. via use of echo. Or at least that’s what happens to me.
So how do I disable the mesh network when, no matter how I set the permissions for the /sys hierarchy while logged in as root, I cannot create a file called lbs_mesh?