From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-path: Received: from vs166246.vserver.de ([62.75.166.246]:51271 "EHLO vs166246.vserver.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753296AbYFENfl (ORCPT ); Thu, 5 Jun 2008 09:35:41 -0400 From: Michael Buesch To: Pavel Roskin Subject: Re: b43 opensource firmware for monitor mode Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 15:35:13 +0200 Cc: bcm43xx-dev@lists.berlios.de, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org References: <200806041716.53771.mb@bu3sch.de> <1212633988.26365.42.camel@dv> In-Reply-To: <1212633988.26365.42.camel@dv> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15" Message-Id: <200806051535.14340.mb@bu3sch.de> (sfid-20080605_153543_940569_D8221F4E) Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thursday 05 June 2008 04:46:28 Pavel Roskin wrote: > On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 17:16 +0200, Michael Buesch wrote: > > Release early, release often. > > Here's the first testing release of the b43 opensource firmware. > > http://bu3sch.de/misc/b43-openfw-20080604.tar.bz2 > > > > Currently only the receive path is partially implemented. So that > > means we can only run it in monitor mode for now. This firmware is > > able to receive packets and push them without special handling (like > > decrypting) to the driver. > > There are lots of bugs, of course. Sometimes the PLCP header is corrupted. > > That will result in a kernel driver warning in xmit.c. > > > > This firmware does _only_ work on wireless core revisions 5, 6, 7, 8 or 10. > > That's great news! Having distributable firmware would simplify > installation, placing b43 to the same league as Intel devices. But > having free firmware would be unique to Broadcom card and extremely > attractive for research in wireless communications and development of > novel devices using non-standard protocol extensions. > > As a short term goal, maybe bcm4328 could be dumbed down to work with > b43? > > I've tried it with bcm4318 first, and it hung hard on module load. Even > Alt-SysRq would not work. It turns out it was revision 9 missing in > your list. > > Then I tries a bcm4306 device with rev 5 core. The module loaded. I > brought it up in managed mode first. Scanning didn't work. I brought > the device down and set monitor mode. But the system hung when I tried > to bring the interface back up. There shouldn't be a reason for a freeze. It might crash, yes, but it always prints out useful messages first for me. -- Greetings Michael.