Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:33:50 -0700
From: "Luis R. Rodriguez" <lrodriguez@atheros.com>
To: Marcel Holtmann <holtmann@linux.intel.com>
CC: Dan Williams <dcbw@redhat.com>,
	"Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@gmail.com>,
	linux-wireless <linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org>,
	<Jouni.Malinen@atheros.com>
Subject: Re: Getting country alpha2 on network manager and using it for crda
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On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 11:56:15PM -0700, Marcel Holtmann wrote:
> Hi Dan,
> 
> > > So since this may not happen for a while I figure I can give a shot.
> > > But I'm curious where we should get our country alpha2 from? Does LSB
> > > define a country has to be somewhere? Maybe the locale? Timezone?
> > > Anyway, in the end the user should be able to change the country too.
> > >
> > > I'm thinking to start by just letting the user pick a country for now.
> > > We can figure out where the hell it gets the country by default later
> > > but if you have ideas that'd be great. It seems reasonable to ask for
> > > this upon installation time (?)
> >
> > My suggestion: use the current timezone as a fallback unless the user
> > has specified the locale somewhere.  That can obviously be done in NM or
> > lower, ideally we delegate this sort of thing to the supplicant and just
> > pass the alpha2 when NM adds the interface to the supplicant.  The
> > addInterface() call args are just a dict, so it would be trivial to add
> > another item in that dict for country code.  Since the country code is
> > global to the machine it's probably something we should just store in
> > the system settings service, and it's also something that probably
> > requires privileges to change.
> 
> I would prefer if wpa_supplicant gets a global method for setting the
> alpha2 value. It should be dynamic and for me wpa_supplicant is the
> right place to handle this value.

Since it seems nm uses wpa_supplicant for most work then it seems
reasonable to stuff it in there for now, if possible, and if agreeable
by Jouni.

> The question on how we set this value is a little bit more trickier.

Well setting should be an option from NM or any system preference
option on a system which lets you update your country.

> What we do need is a Location Manager that can use multiple source to
> get our current location (WiFi, GSM/UMTS, GPS etc.).

I suppose we don't have anything like this yet so this seems to be
a new goal. I'll go poke lsb-discuss mailing list. For now I think its
as easy as deciding on flatfile where an alpha2 can be put. Later on
we can worry about all the ways this can be updated.

  Luis