Re: [RFC] ath9k: fix listening to idle requests

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

On Sun, Nov 01, 2009 at 10:56:19PM -0800, Vasanth Thiagarajan wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 10:59:53AM +0530, Vasanth Thiagarajan wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 08:08:22PM +0530, Luis Rodriguez wrote:
> > > On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Vasanthakumar Thiagarajan
> > > <vasanth@atheros.com> wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 02:22:26AM +0530, Luis Rodriguez wrote:
> > > >> The way idle configuration detection was implemented as
> > > >> busted due to the fact that it assumed the ath9k virtual wiphy,
> > > >> the aphy, would be marked as inactive if it was not used but
> > > >> it turns out an aphy is always active if its the only wiphy
> > > >> present. We need to distinguish between aphy activity and
> > > >> idleness so we now add an idle bool for the aphy and mark
> > > >> it as such based on the passed IEEE80211_CONF_CHANGE_IDLE
> > > >> from mac80211.
> > > >>
> > > >> Previous to all_wiphys_idle would never be true when using
> > > >> only one device so we never really were using
> > > >> IEEE80211_CONF_CHANGE_IDLE -- we never turned the radio
> > > >> off or on upon IEEE80211_CONF_CHANGE_IDLE changes as radio
> > > >> changes depended on all_wiphys_idle being true either to
> > > >> turn the radio on or off. Since it was always false for
> > > >> one device this code was doing nothing.
> > > >>
> > > >> Reported-by: Vasanthakumar Thiagarajan <vasanth@atheros.com>
> > > >> Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com>
> > > >> ---
> > > >>
> > > >> Vasanth, what do you think?
> > > >
> > > > Still we will have issue when bringing up a sec wiphy while the
> > > > primary wiphy is in idle state. ath9k_start() does not brought up
> > > > the newly created wiphy interface when the state of at least one
> > > > previously created interface is in ACTIVE state. Unless already
> > > > brought up interfaces are put down we hit this situation whenever
> > > > we try to bring up a new secondary wiphy interface. So with this
> > > > patch the actual h/w will remain radio disabled state even after
> > > > a new interface is in active state. We need to bring the h/w into
> > > > active state if all old interfaces are in idle state in
> > > > ath9k_start().
> > >
> > > I don't see what prevents a secondary virtual wiphy from getting the
> > > radio started -- perhaps I'm missing something. When a virtual wiphy
> > > needs to become non-idle that'll come from the mac80211 non-idle
> > > config call and that will find that one device is non-idle and hence
> > > start it.
> >
> > mac80211 will issue config() for non-idle only when the respective
> > wiphy is already put into idle state.
> 
> When testing the patch I did not see this issue. The patch works
> fine. I'll debug it further to see why the issue I was expecting
> did not show up, but now this patch looks fine.

OK thanks for testing, I'll send in patch form.

  Luis