Re: [PATCH] cfg80211: allow wext to remove keys that don't exist

[Pavel Roskin <proski@gnu.org>]

On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 19:56 +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
> Some applications using wireless extensions expect to be able to
> remove a key that doesn't exist. One example is wpa_supplicant
> which doesn't actually change behaviour when running into an
> error while trying to do that, but it prints an error message
> which users interpret as wpa_supplicant having problems.

It sounds like you are working around a userspace problem in the kernel.

> The safe thing to do is not change the behaviour of wireless
> extensions any more, so when the driver reports -ENOENT let
> the wext bridge code return success to userspace. To guarantee
> this, also document that drivers should return -ENOENT when the
> key doesn't exist.

You patch is changing the behavior or wireless extensions.  It would be
much more reasonable for wpa_supplicant not to remove non-existent keys
or (if it's unsafe or non-practical for some reason) not to report
-ENOENT to the user.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin