Re: How to Autoconnect Two WiFi Cards?

[Fabian Herb <fabian.herb@xtonomy.ai>]

Hi Denis,

>  - When considering a network, first check whether a network with the same SSID/security type is being connected to by other stations managed by iwd
>  - This should be easy to do by looping of the station_list and checking connected_network / connected_bss members of struct station.
>  - If the networks match, just skip it and continue on to the next autoconnect target.
>  - This should result in each station object connecting to a different SSID. Once latched onto the SSID, station will try to roam only within that network.

Thanks for the hint! But wouldn’t that mean that it’s basically random which interface connects to which SSID? Right now I’m configuring IPs and routing via systemd-networkd for each interface, and that would stop working if the two interfaces are connected the wrong way around. The approach also screams for race conditions :D.

I was thinking about something like this:
- Add a configuration option to the network file format which holds an interface name
- When iterating the list of networks to autoconnect to, skip the entries for which the interface name is set AND it does not match the current interface.

> Well, it could work, but you'd be running multiple dbus instances and there wouldn't be any coordination between iwds.  Also, you'd have to make sure each iwd instance runs with a different state directory and probably different config file (for band preferences).  See 'man 8 iwd' for details on how to do that. Another hint, ell already honors DBUS_SYSTEM_BUS_ADDRESS environment variable. So you can start multiple dbus instances, record the address and point each iwd to the dbus instance via DBUS_SYSTEM_BUS_ADDRESS environment variable.  No need to change any code inside iwd.

I’ll give DBUS_SYSTEM_BUS_ADDRESS a try, thanks!

Fabian