Subject: Re: Using wpa_supplicant in D-Bus mode with nl80211 driver
From: Marcel Holtmann <marcel@holtmann.org>
To: Jouni Malinen <j@w1.fi>
Cc: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
In-Reply-To: <20090422170852.GA7298@jm.kir.nu>
References: <1240419177.12282.3.camel@localhost.localdomain>
	 <20090422170852.GA7298@jm.kir.nu>
Content-Type: text/plain
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:55:17 +0100
Message-Id: <1240426517.12282.11.camel@localhost.localdomain> (sfid-20090422_205528_760508_1B137A01)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org

Hi Jouni,

> > I am trying to use wpa_supplicant in D-Bus mode with the nl80211 driver
> > instead of WEXT. I don't seem to be able to control the from the command
> > line and the -D option doesn't take.
> 
> I would assume you are doing this with NM. You could either change it to
> register the interface (this is not from -D option, but from the D-Bus
> message) with the nl80211 driver or try to build wpa_supplicant without
> WEXT support (which would make the nl80211 wrapper the default one). I
> don't think either of these are yet acceptable as a generic solution,
> but making NM request driver "nl80211,wext" could be a suitable first
> step when moving to wpa_supplicant 0.7.x (this makes wpa_supplicant
> first try with nl80211 and if needed, fall back to WEXT).

I am doing manual testing and with ConnMan. However I would prefer to
have a global driver setting "nl80211,wext" that I can give on the
command line and that will then chosen as default if the addInterface
method doesn't give a driver. I really don't need a per interface
setting here.

> > Can we fix this somehow? I really wanna get rid of using WEXT.
> 
> There still one remaining WEXT operation even with driver_nl80211.c in
> wpa_supplicant, so we are not yet there, but there is work going on in
> getting that added to nl80211 after which point -Dnl80211 (or
> -Dnl80211,wext for more likely distro use) should allow this goal to be
> met.

Fair enough, but we are getting there and when testing, I like to be
using as much nl80211 as possible.

Regards

Marcel