Re: Automatic/manual regulatory settings

["Luis R. Rodriguez" <lrodriguez@atheros.com>]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 07:44:41AM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-02-12 at 14:43 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Dan Williams <dcbw@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2009-02-12 at 18:19 +0100, Jan Schneider wrote:
> > >> While looking at logs collected for my microcode crash problem I
> > >> noticed that cfg80211 loads US regulatory settings.
> > >> If I understand the documentation correctly the actual country should
> > >> be set either by the AP or the device using cfg80211. Neither seems to
> > >> happen, so is it the "correct" way to do this through the
> > >> ieee80211_regdom module parameter? And I wonder how this is supposed
> > >> to happen "idiot-proof" in the future?
> > >
> > > In the future it would get set by whatever configures your network
> > > connection.  Either system scripts like ifup/ifdown, or configured
> > > manually in the config files that ifup/ifdown use, or automatically via
> > > NetworkManager based on some setting, or via NetworkManager based on a
> > > user-override.
> > >
> > > One idea I've toyed with for NetworkManager is using the city you select
> > > in the GUI Timezone control panel that all desktop environments for
> > > timezone selection.  Just a thought.  Or, it could come from a
> > > system-wide setting by your sysadmin in /etc, or set on a per-connection
> > > basis when you set up the NetworkManager connection for that AP in the
> > > NM connection editor.
> >
> > I think it'd be nice to leverage all these different possible location
> > based hints to help with your location -- and more. I think GeoClue
> > does such a thing (works with dbus and all), but I have not yet had
> > time to try it.
> >
> > http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/GeoClue
> 
> Yeah, if there's GPS available on the system we can certainly use that
> too :)

Absolutely, so does this seem to heavy for a distribution to carry? It seems
openhand is working on this which makes me believe it should work on mobile
devices pretty well.

  Luis