Subject: Re: Incorrect signal levels reported using wpa_supplicant's
 driver_nl80211
From: Marcel Holtmann <marcel@holtmann.org>
To: Dan Williams <dcbw@redhat.com>
Cc: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>,
	Alexander Sack <asac@ubuntu.com>,
	Maxim Levitsky <maximlevitsky@gmail.com>,
	"hostap@lists.shmoo.com" <hostap@lists.shmoo.com>,
	linux-wireless <linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org>,
	networkmanager-list <networkmanager-list@gnome.org>
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Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:41:11 +0100
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Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org

Hi Dan,

> > > > > Soon.  We've got some patches for this, but we'll also need tons of
> > > > > testing.  The WEXT stuff is pretty baked while nl80211 is still under
> > > > > some flux.  But of course the only way we bake nl80211 is by switching
> > > > > to it...
> > > > 
> > > > iirc, we currently we hardcode wext in NM code. How about adding a keyfile
> > > > config that users could use to switch to nl80211 until we feel confident
> > > > that it's good enough for everyone?
> > > 
> > > commit d27df100b587dd95f3256a8baf9db0c5d4380089 in wpa_supplicant allows
> > > you to do that by editing the service file.
> > 
> > that is funny, when I asked for a global command line switch for
> > choosing a different driver, the argument was that the application
> > adding the interface is suppose to do it by itself. Now we can do it in
> > the service file. Never the less ConnMan got its own switch to choose
> > which driver will be used. Does help a lot in testing and is way easier
> > since you don't have to restart wpa_supplicant all the time.
> 
> In reality, NM upstream will just switch over one day and distros that
> use shitty and/or proprietary drivers will need to either (a) fix them,
> or (b) patch NM to use wext locally.  That's how progress gets made.

my goal is to run completely without wext driver in wpa_supplicant and
WEXT disabled in the kernel. However so far it caused some issues. I
think that most of them got fixed, but I never got around fully
verifying it. In the Moblin 2.0 timeframe we had for some time
nl80211,wext as driver selection, but unfortunately that never worked
out. I hope for Moblin 2.2 we are able to get this up and running.

One big missing piece is of course a new stable release of
wpa_supplicant that contains all the fixes.

Regards

Marcel