Subject: Re: iwlist and network-manager bug report
From: Dan Williams <dcbw@redhat.com>
To: jt@hpl.hp.com
Cc: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>,
	linux-wireless <linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070918173718.GA1466@bougret.hpl.hp.com>
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Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:02:03 -0400
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Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org

On Tue, 2007-09-18 at 10:37 -0700, Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2007 at 12:15:22PM +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-09-17 at 17:36 -0700, Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> > 
> > > > Yeah, I don't think they cared for non-ascii at the time.
> > > 
> > > 	There were not concerned about UI, witness the mess in
> > > specifying WEP keys (do you want passphrase with that ?).
> > 
> > Is passphrase actually specified in 802.11? I always thought it was some
> > external hashing but didn't look it up.
> 
> 	Yes, it's some external hashing, and if I remember there is at
> least two variants of it.

There are three: a) ASCII passphrase, b) MD5 passphrase (the most
popular), and c) Apple Airport password.

All three result in a different key for the same input.

Dan

> > But yes, I don't think in 1999
> > many people cared about general UIs...
> > 
> > > 	I'm talking of all driver that have their own private API :
> > > --------------------------------
> > > # cat /proc/driver/aironet/eth0/SSID 
> > > MY_ESSID
> > > --------------------------------
> > 
> > Oh. I didn't think that existed. Is there any point in that or could we
> > just remove it?
> 
> 	I say we just ignore it, it mostly legacy drivers, and some
> people may use it.
> 
> > > 	I forgot one little issue.
> > > 	Remember all the fuss about the ESSID API change a long while
> > > back ? The goal was to support ESSID a array of char as opposed to
> > > ASCII strings in the API. There was a big fuss, and at that time John
> > > did a backward compatibility hack to support the old API in the
> > > kernel.
> > > 	Well, the hack of John is broken on the receive side. It
> > > basically prevents us to implement what you want, amongst other
> > > things. This is what you currently get :
> > > ---------------------------------------
> > > >./iwconfig eth0
> > > eth0      IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"my_essid\x00"  Nickname:"HERMES I"
> > >           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
> > >           Bit Rate:11 Mb/s   Sensitivity:1/3  
> > > ---------------------------------------
> > 
> > Hmmm. So we already \x00-escape the trailing NUL?
> 
> 	No, that's only in the brand new version of Wireless Tools
> 30.pre1 that include the escaping code. I coded that following your
> suggestions, it includes full escaping in output and input. But now
> I'm stuck because of that bug, I can't really distribute it.
> 
> > > 	I've already sent the patch to fix that to John, don't know
> > > where it went :
> > > 		http://marc.info/?t=118401941300001&r=1&w=2
> > > 	I can resend you a copy if you want. I feel this patch ought
> > > to go also in the various stable series.
> > 
> > Probably got lost, you should probably resend and to -stable as well.
> 
> 	I'll do, but you seem much more efficient at getting stuff in
> the kernel ;-)
> 
> > johannes
> 
> 	Regards,
> 
> 	Jean
>