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From: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>
To: jt@hpl.hp.com
Subject: Re: wpa supplicant/ipw3945, ESSID last char missing
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 21:47:02 +0200
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On Monday, 2 October 2006 20:55, Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 11:15:37AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:58:24 -0400
> > > 
> > > You have a mismatch between your wireless-tools, your kernel, and/or
> > > wpa_supplicant.  WE-21 uses the _real_ ssid length rather than the
> > > kludge of hacking off the last byte used previously.  Please ensure that
> > > your tools, driver, and kernel are using WE-21.
> > > 'cat /proc/net/wireless' should tell you what your kernel is using.
> > > Getting the driver WE is a bit harder and you may have to look at the
> > > source.
> > 
> > Jean, John: the amount of trouble which this change is causing is quite
> > high considering that we're not even at -rc1 yet.  It's going to get worse.
> 
> 	We have to split between the different issues we have seen.
> 	Tools issue (the wpa_supplicant problem). -> those can only be
> fixed by people upgrading. Fortunately, there are not so many tools
> affected, and new version of those tools were released last
> April/May. As I said, most distro have those in the pipe.
> 	In-Kernel driver issues (the Orinoco driver problem). -> those
> can be patched and fixed as we go along. I would not worry about
> those.
> 	Out-of-kernel issues (the ipw3945 driver problem). -> those
> drivers need to be updated. That's the problem of living outside the
> kernel. Very often those drivers are reactive with respect to kernel
> API changes, rather than pro-active, so there is not much we can do.
> 
> > It doesn't sound like it'll be too hard to arrange for the kernel to
> > continue to work correctly with old userspace?
> 
> 	Actually, it's impossible. New userspace can work across both
> version, old userspace fails on new version.

<rant>
Well, please tell me now what number of people actually _will_ upgrade?

And if they don't, will they use the -rc kernels?  No, they won't, because
of the apparent wireless breakage.

This way we loose quite a few testers and the entire development
process is affected, and that's _only_ because you have decided it
will be _convenient_ to change the ABI.  However, such changes affect
_everyone_ and in a wrong way, except for a few people who actually want the
change.  They cause more damage than they are worth, so they should be avoided
at all reasonable cost.

It would be fair to introduce the change when distributions actually ship the
userland tools capable of handling it, but not _now_.
</rant>

Greetings,
Rafael


-- 
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
		R. Buckminster Fuller
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