Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

Google has confirmed it will have a Google Summer of Code for 2010
[1]. Last year we had a few projects suggested (4) and accepted (3)
under the Linux Foundation sponsoring organization umbrella [2].
Unfortunately out of the three projects that were approved only one
completed successfully, that of the adding AP support to Network
Manger. I haven't seen specific updates to the progress of that but I
do know some patches were indeed submitted to help with this effort.
Perhaps the student can elaborate more.

The other projects that did not pass are up as suggestion for this
year again, but am hoping there are more. If you do have a project
idea please just go ahead and add your idea to the list of possible
projects [3]; you don't have to fill out a full page for it for now
but the more details you can add the better. If the Linux Foundation
does give us a few slots I recommend we be a little more strict about
acceptance criteria since our failure rate was pretty high (2/3) and
it would be better to see other projects get accepted if we do not
have the confidence our projects will be completed. One possibility to
help with the success rate of our projects might be to narrow the
scope down a little more. I think the testing and GeoClue project
might have been a little too ambitious and although we did have pretty
excited students we saw no progress at all.

If you have ideas for projects just feel free to add to the wiki. We
should strive to get all project ideas finalized by the middle of
February, latest the end of February. Hopefully towards the end of
February we can see who would be willing to mentor each project.
Google plans on starting to accept would-be-mentor organization
applications on  March 8th so we'll need our ideas finalized well
before that so we can send them as suggestions to the Linux Foundation
to see if we can get a few good project candidates accepted.

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-discuss/browse_thread/thread/d839c0b02ac15b3f
[2] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/GSoC/2009
[3] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/GSoC/2010

  Luis

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Till Kamppeter]

Great to hear from you.

I will apply again for the LF entering as a mentoring organization and I 
will add your projects to the list of proposed projects for the LF 
application.

    Till

P. S.: Do you know someone with knowledge in data compression? I will 
run a project at OpenPrinting which is about data compression.


Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> Google has confirmed it will have a Google Summer of Code for 2010
> [1]. Last year we had a few projects suggested (4) and accepted (3)
> under the Linux Foundation sponsoring organization umbrella [2].
> Unfortunately out of the three projects that were approved only one
> completed successfully, that of the adding AP support to Network
> Manger. I haven't seen specific updates to the progress of that but I
> do know some patches were indeed submitted to help with this effort.
> Perhaps the student can elaborate more.
> 
> The other projects that did not pass are up as suggestion for this
> year again, but am hoping there are more. If you do have a project
> idea please just go ahead and add your idea to the list of possible
> projects [3]; you don't have to fill out a full page for it for now
> but the more details you can add the better. If the Linux Foundation
> does give us a few slots I recommend we be a little more strict about
> acceptance criteria since our failure rate was pretty high (2/3) and
> it would be better to see other projects get accepted if we do not
> have the confidence our projects will be completed. One possibility to
> help with the success rate of our projects might be to narrow the
> scope down a little more. I think the testing and GeoClue project
> might have been a little too ambitious and although we did have pretty
> excited students we saw no progress at all.
> 
> If you have ideas for projects just feel free to add to the wiki. We
> should strive to get all project ideas finalized by the middle of
> February, latest the end of February. Hopefully towards the end of
> February we can see who would be willing to mentor each project.
> Google plans on starting to accept would-be-mentor organization
> applications on  March 8th so we'll need our ideas finalized well
> before that so we can send them as suggestions to the Linux Foundation
> to see if we can get a few good project candidates accepted.
> 
> [1] http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-discuss/browse_thread/thread/d839c0b02ac15b3f
> [2] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/GSoC/2009
> [3] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/GSoC/2010
> 
>   Luis
> 

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 2:06 PM, Till Kamppeter
<till.kamppeter@gmail.com> wrote:
> Great to hear from you.
>
> I will apply again for the LF entering as a mentoring organization and I
> will add your projects to the list of proposed projects for the LF
> application.

Great thanks Till, the old projects are still with the old data so
they have the old 2009 mentors. Hopefully the old mentors would still
be up to mentor the same projects this year, we'll see. I at least can
mentor the testing/GeoClue stuff but one thing is certain, the GeoClue
stuff will *definitely* need a primary really active GNOME mentor. I'm
not sure if we should just punt this off to GNOME completely or what.

>   Till
>
> P. S.: Do you know someone with knowledge in data compression? I will run a
> project at OpenPrinting which is about data compression.

Nope sorry.

 Luis

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Hin-Tak Leung]

On 1/28/10, Till Kamppeter <till.kamppeter@gmail.com> wrote:
> Great to hear from you.
>
> I will apply again for the LF entering as a mentoring organization and I
> will add your projects to the list of proposed projects for the LF
> application.

Perhaps at this point, it might be a good idea to share some insights
for reasons of failures/non-competition. I think the first year (2008)
of LF's participation, it was 6/8 competion over all? How did 2009 do?
Luis mentioned that 2/3 failed out of the 3 wireless-related project,
but AFAIK there were about 10 accepted in 2009 under the LF umbrella -
what's the completion rate for the other 7? It is probably a good idea
to write some of that up (non-competition and the possibility of
re-do) in one of Linux Foundation's wiki pages.

AFAIK the overall non-competition rate across all organization is
about 10% so the 2/8 in 2008 wasn't too bad.

> P. S.: Do you know someone with knowledge in data compression? I will
> run a project at OpenPrinting which is about data compression.

What are you thinking of? :-)

Hin-Tak

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Frederic Weisbecker]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 01:38:27PM -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> Google has confirmed it will have a Google Summer of Code for 2010
> [1]. Last year we had a few projects suggested (4) and accepted (3)
> under the Linux Foundation sponsoring organization umbrella [2].
> Unfortunately out of the three projects that were approved only one
> completed successfully, that of the adding AP support to Network
> Manger. I haven't seen specific updates to the progress of that but I
> do know some patches were indeed submitted to help with this effort.
> Perhaps the student can elaborate more.
> 
> The other projects that did not pass are up as suggestion for this
> year again, but am hoping there are more. If you do have a project
> idea please just go ahead and add your idea to the list of possible
> projects [3]; you don't have to fill out a full page for it for now
> but the more details you can add the better. If the Linux Foundation
> does give us a few slots I recommend we be a little more strict about
> acceptance criteria since our failure rate was pretty high (2/3) and
> it would be better to see other projects get accepted if we do not
> have the confidence our projects will be completed. One possibility to
> help with the success rate of our projects might be to narrow the
> scope down a little more. I think the testing and GeoClue project
> might have been a little too ambitious and although we did have pretty
> excited students we saw no progress at all.
> 
> If you have ideas for projects just feel free to add to the wiki. We
> should strive to get all project ideas finalized by the middle of
> February, latest the end of February. Hopefully towards the end of
> February we can see who would be willing to mentor each project.
> Google plans on starting to accept would-be-mentor organization
> applications on  March 8th so we'll need our ideas finalized well
> before that so we can send them as suggestions to the Linux Foundation
> to see if we can get a few good project candidates accepted.
> 
> [1] http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-discuss/browse_thread/thread/d839c0b02ac15b3f
> [2] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/GSoC/2009
> [3] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/GSoC/2010



I'm sorry if I'm a bit off-topic. But as I see this announce,
I'm wondering about the topics for the google summer of code
in the wider scope of the entire kernel.

I'm a student and there are fair chances I'll be free for this
summer so I start to think about applying.

Are there currently some plans concerning other kernel areas?
That doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in a wireless project :)
but there are many other areas that could host a Gsoc project too
and I don't want to miss the whole variety of proposals.

I guess we also can, as applying students, propose subjects too.
Provided we find a mentor for the given project, which makes the
things harder in this direction I fear.

Anyway, what would be the right place to submit such proposals? I
have various ideas in mind, in topics such as tracing/profiling,
realtime, among other things... (could be: "Do as much bkl bashing
as you can in two months, have fun, be brave...").

Thanks.

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sorry if I'm a bit off-topic. But as I see this announce,
> I'm wondering about the topics for the google summer of code
> in the wider scope of the entire kernel.
>
> I'm a student and there are fair chances I'll be free for this
> summer so I start to think about applying.
>
> Are there currently some plans concerning other kernel areas?

These would be under the Linux Foundation umbrella, the wireless stuff
I just posted is just for wireless. I do not believe we have a common
forum yet for general linux stuff. Till?

> That doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in a wireless project :)
> but there are many other areas that could host a Gsoc project too
> and I don't want to miss the whole variety of proposals.

The LF projects will be posted on the LF site.

> I guess we also can, as applying students, propose subjects too.
> Provided we find a mentor for the given project, which makes the
> things harder in this direction I fear.

I don't see why not.

> Anyway, what would be the right place to submit such proposals? I
> have various ideas in mind, in topics such as tracing/profiling,
> realtime, among other things... (could be: "Do as much bkl bashing
> as you can in two months, have fun, be brave...").

I'll let Till answer :D

  Luis

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Greg KH]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 03:23:15PM -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm sorry if I'm a bit off-topic. But as I see this announce,
> > I'm wondering about the topics for the google summer of code
> > in the wider scope of the entire kernel.
> >
> > I'm a student and there are fair chances I'll be free for this
> > summer so I start to think about applying.
> >
> > Are there currently some plans concerning other kernel areas?
> 
> These would be under the Linux Foundation umbrella, the wireless stuff
> I just posted is just for wireless. I do not believe we have a common
> forum yet for general linux stuff. Till?

Traditionally, PSU (Portland State University) handles a number of Linux
kernel related projects for GSoC due to the Linux kernel developers who
are mentors for them, and the faculty who are very clued into the kernel
and x.org and general open source development.

Also, the way that PSU handles the projects, is it relies on the
students to propose the projects, not the other way around.  Due to
that, the success rate is very high as people do not generally propose
things that they do not have some kind of interest in :)

So if you have a kernel related project you wish to do, feel free to
submit it to the PSU group.

thanks,

greg k-h

p.s. I've been a mentor for the PSU GSoC group for many years now.

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Frederic Weisbecker]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 03:31:50PM -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 03:23:15PM -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I'm sorry if I'm a bit off-topic. But as I see this announce,
> > > I'm wondering about the topics for the google summer of code
> > > in the wider scope of the entire kernel.
> > >
> > > I'm a student and there are fair chances I'll be free for this
> > > summer so I start to think about applying.
> > >
> > > Are there currently some plans concerning other kernel areas?
> > 
> > These would be under the Linux Foundation umbrella, the wireless stuff
> > I just posted is just for wireless. I do not believe we have a common
> > forum yet for general linux stuff. Till?
> 
> Traditionally, PSU (Portland State University) handles a number of Linux
> kernel related projects for GSoC due to the Linux kernel developers who
> are mentors for them, and the faculty who are very clued into the kernel
> and x.org and general open source development.
> 
> Also, the way that PSU handles the projects, is it relies on the
> students to propose the projects, not the other way around.  Due to
> that, the success rate is very high as people do not generally propose
> things that they do not have some kind of interest in :)
> 
> So if you have a kernel related project you wish to do, feel free to
> submit it to the PSU group.
> 
> thanks,



Ah, good to know. Noted, thanks!

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Till Kamppeter]

No problem for students to suggest topics. We are not restricted to 
wireless in terms of kernel. We support kernel projects in general.

Please give your suggestion as answer to this e-mail, doing "Reply to 
all", as I am not a kernel export, the other participants of this thread 
should have a look at the student's project ideas and help finding mentors.

    Till

Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm sorry if I'm a bit off-topic. But as I see this announce,
>> I'm wondering about the topics for the google summer of code
>> in the wider scope of the entire kernel.
>>
>> I'm a student and there are fair chances I'll be free for this
>> summer so I start to think about applying.
>>
>> Are there currently some plans concerning other kernel areas?
> 
> These would be under the Linux Foundation umbrella, the wireless stuff
> I just posted is just for wireless. I do not believe we have a common
> forum yet for general linux stuff. Till?
> 
>> That doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in a wireless project :)
>> but there are many other areas that could host a Gsoc project too
>> and I don't want to miss the whole variety of proposals.
> 
> The LF projects will be posted on the LF site.
> 
>> I guess we also can, as applying students, propose subjects too.
>> Provided we find a mentor for the given project, which makes the
>> things harder in this direction I fear.
> 
> I don't see why not.
> 
>> Anyway, what would be the right place to submit such proposals? I
>> have various ideas in mind, in topics such as tracing/profiling,
>> realtime, among other things... (could be: "Do as much bkl bashing
>> as you can in two months, have fun, be brave...").
> 
> I'll let Till answer :D
> 
>   Luis
> 

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Frederic Weisbecker]

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 12:51:59AM +0100, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> No problem for students to suggest topics. We are not restricted to  
> wireless in terms of kernel. We support kernel projects in general.
>
> Please give your suggestion as answer to this e-mail, doing "Reply to  
> all", as I am not a kernel export, the other participants of this thread  
> should have a look at the student's project ideas and help finding 
> mentors.
>
>    Till



Ok, I hope it's not too late.
Here is one subject that I would like to apply for:


= Improving tracing in perf events / ftrace =


Using trace events under perf events is still a young feature
and needs various improvements.

- Syscall events can carry only raw values and addresses.
We need to make them "aware" of strings and structures contents
from userspace.

- Make function / function graph tracers usable by perf

- Optimize tracing fast-path

- Improve perf tools to better handle trace events scalability

- Provide new perf tools that exploit trace events (scheduler
  migration analysis, etc...)

- Implement a per context excluding (eg: exclude irqs, exclude functions, etc...)

- There are always things to do there.


Of course, each of these elements require a lot of work,
so not all of them can be done in two months, and some
of them can be started already before the summer.

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Till Kamppeter]

On 03/09/2010 11:43 PM, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> Ok, I hope it's not too late.

No, we are well before the student's application period.

> Here is one subject that I would like to apply for:
>

Thank you for your suggestion.

Great that you tell us your idea already now, we can put it on our ideas 
page to support our application as mentoring organization,

    Till

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Frederic Weisbecker]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 09:12:12AM +0100, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> On 03/09/2010 11:43 PM, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
>> Ok, I hope it's not too late.
>
> No, we are well before the student's application period.
>
>> Here is one subject that I would like to apply for:
>>
>
> Thank you for your suggestion.
>
> Great that you tell us your idea already now, we can put it on our ideas  
> page to support our application as mentoring organization,
>
>    Till


Thanks for adding it!

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Till Kamppeter]

Can someone post this project idea on the ideas list today (marking that 
it comes from a student). This could support our application as 
mentoring organization.

    Till

On 03/09/2010 11:43 PM, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 12:51:59AM +0100, Till Kamppeter wrote:
>> No problem for students to suggest topics. We are not restricted to
>> wireless in terms of kernel. We support kernel projects in general.
>>
>> Please give your suggestion as answer to this e-mail, doing "Reply to
>> all", as I am not a kernel export, the other participants of this thread
>> should have a look at the student's project ideas and help finding
>> mentors.
>>
>>     Till
>
>
>
> Ok, I hope it's not too late.
> Here is one subject that I would like to apply for:
>
>
> = Improving tracing in perf events / ftrace =
>
>
> Using trace events under perf events is still a young feature
> and needs various improvements.
>
> - Syscall events can carry only raw values and addresses.
> We need to make them "aware" of strings and structures contents
> from userspace.
>
> - Make function / function graph tracers usable by perf
>
> - Optimize tracing fast-path
>
> - Improve perf tools to better handle trace events scalability
>
> - Provide new perf tools that exploit trace events (scheduler
>    migration analysis, etc...)
>
> - Implement a per context excluding (eg: exclude irqs, exclude functions, etc...)
>
> - There are always things to do there.
>
>
> Of course, each of these elements require a lot of work,
> so not all of them can be done in two months, and some
> of them can be started already before the summer.
>
>

Re: [lsb-discuss] Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Denis Silakov]

Added this item to '2010 GSoC Kernel work' page:

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/gsoc/2010-gsoc-kernel-work

On 03/12/10 11:59, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> Can someone post this project idea on the ideas list today (marking that 
> it comes from a student). This could support our application as 
> mentoring organization.
>
>     Till
>   

-- 
Regards,
Denis.

Re: [lsb-discuss] Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Till Kamppeter]

Thanks for adding it.

    Till

On 03/12/2010 10:38 AM, Denis Silakov wrote:
> Added this item to '2010 GSoC Kernel work' page:
>
> https://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/gsoc/2010-gsoc-kernel-work
>
> On 03/12/10 11:59, Till Kamppeter wrote:
>> Can someone post this project idea on the ideas list today (marking that
>> it comes from a student). This could support our application as
>> mentoring organization.
>>
>>      Till
>>
>

Re: [lsb-discuss] Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Frederic Weisbecker]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 12:38:15PM +0300, Denis Silakov wrote:
> Added this item to '2010 GSoC Kernel work' page:
> 
> https://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/gsoc/2010-gsoc-kernel-work


Before asking the Portland State University as Greg suggested, is there
someone who would like to mentor this project?

Thanks.

 
> On 03/12/10 11:59, Till Kamppeter wrote:
> > Can someone post this project idea on the ideas list today (marking that 
> > it comes from a student). This could support our application as 
> > mentoring organization.
> >
> >     Till
> >   
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Denis.
> 

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Witold Sowa]

Luis R. Rodriguez pisze:
> Google has confirmed it will have a Google Summer of Code for 2010
> [1]. Last year we had a few projects suggested (4) and accepted (3)
> under the Linux Foundation sponsoring organization umbrella [2].
> Unfortunately out of the three projects that were approved only one
> completed successfully, that of the adding AP support to Network
> Manger. I haven't seen specific updates to the progress of that but I
> do know some patches were indeed submitted to help with this effort.
> Perhaps the student can elaborate more.
> 
Hi Luis,

I didn't know that I was _the_only_one_ student who completed his
project. My project goal was to add support for AP mode to
NetworkManages with use of wpa_supplicant's newly developed AP mode.
When the GSoC started, it turned out that adding AP mode to NM doesn't
need too much effort or at least a lot less that I could put during
three months of work. As the result, I focused on development of new
DBus API for wpa_supplicant. We have designed it together with Dan
Williams (he designed it with my little help, actually) and I
implemented it. The new API is present in wpa_supplicant since 0.7.0
development version and we are still working on it.
I've implemented the new API support for NetworkManager, but Dan didn't
apply it (yet). Since the API has changed lately, we will need alter
NetworkManager too. I'm going to do this when the API will reach more or
less stable state. AP mode for NetworkManager is dependent on new
wpa_supplicnt DBus API, so the NM AP mode patches won't be applied
before the new API support implementation patches. The NM changes won't
land earlier then in 0.8.1 version for sure.

Some time ago johill asked me if I would be interested in hacking on
adding WPS support to NetworkManager. Well, I would but I don't know
when I'll find some time for that. I don't know how much of work would
it require, but it possibly could be a topic of one of GSoC 2010
projects. I have no idea know if anybody would be willing to be a mentor
for such a project.

Regards,
Witek.

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Johannes Berg]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 791 bytes --]

On Sun, 2010-01-31 at 22:03 +0100, Witold Sowa wrote:

> Some time ago johill asked me if I would be interested in hacking on
> adding WPS support to NetworkManager. Well, I would but I don't know
> when I'll find some time for that. I don't know how much of work would
> it require, but it possibly could be a topic of one of GSoC 2010
> projects. I have no idea know if anybody would be willing to be a mentor
> for such a project.

Sounds like a good project to me, but I don't think I'd be a good mentor
for since I'm not familiar with the NM codebase at all. As for how much
work it would require, I think the basic client-side functionality could
possibly be "too simple" for you, WPS has a lot of additional
functionality (e.g. WPS support for the AP side).

johannes

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
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Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Johannes Berg
<johannes@sipsolutions.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-01-31 at 22:03 +0100, Witold Sowa wrote:
>
>> Some time ago johill asked me if I would be interested in hacking on
>> adding WPS support to NetworkManager. Well, I would but I don't know
>> when I'll find some time for that. I don't know how much of work would
>> it require, but it possibly could be a topic of one of GSoC 2010
>> projects. I have no idea know if anybody would be willing to be a mentor
>> for such a project.
>
> Sounds like a good project to me, but I don't think I'd be a good mentor
> for since I'm not familiar with the NM codebase at all. As for how much
> work it would require, I think the basic client-side functionality could
> possibly be "too simple" for you, WPS has a lot of additional
> functionality (e.g. WPS support for the AP side).

In case it helps, I believe all that would be required is the dbus
stuff, there are sample GUI examples of this already provided through
the wpa_supplicant wpa_gui.

  Luis

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Maxim Levitsky]

On Mon, 2010-02-01 at 10:01 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: 
> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Johannes Berg
> <johannes@sipsolutions.net> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2010-01-31 at 22:03 +0100, Witold Sowa wrote:
> >
> >> Some time ago johill asked me if I would be interested in hacking on
> >> adding WPS support to NetworkManager. Well, I would but I don't know
> >> when I'll find some time for that. I don't know how much of work would
> >> it require, but it possibly could be a topic of one of GSoC 2010
> >> projects. I have no idea know if anybody would be willing to be a mentor
> >> for such a project.
> >
> > Sounds like a good project to me, but I don't think I'd be a good mentor
> > for since I'm not familiar with the NM codebase at all. As for how much
> > work it would require, I think the basic client-side functionality could
> > possibly be "too simple" for you, WPS has a lot of additional
> > functionality (e.g. WPS support for the AP side).
> 
> In case it helps, I believe all that would be required is the dbus
> stuff, there are sample GUI examples of this already provided through
> the wpa_supplicant wpa_gui.

Here are couple of ideas (I don't think I will enter the program
though):

1 - Make Ad-Hoc WPA networks work (with NM). This would involve changes
in kernel, but I don't think will involve changes in hardware drivers.

2 - Allow a wireless card to associate to several APs at once (if they
share the frequency). 
Implement this at least for ath5/9k. Madwifi had that feature. Maybe
ath9k has. If it has that feature, test it.
Implement proper GUI support in NM for that.

3 - Create wardriving^Wwireless analysis tool.
No, not for wardriving. I mean an application that shows and analyzes
nicely the signal strength of nearby APs, and other features of it 

airodump-ng does have some features, but it is focused too much on
cracking that on analysis.
For example it slows to an crawl, when I attempt to do iperf and monitor
huge traffic that is sent.

It could see how many packets are dropped, how many resends were done,
have proper ESSID filter, so it can be used in large scale networks
(I once tried to understand locations of wifi access points in my uni,
so I know where to get proper wifi connection.)

A lot more can be extracted from monitor mode.


Best regards,
Maxim Levitsky

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[david]

On Mon, 1 Feb 2010, Maxim Levitsky wrote:

> On Mon, 2010-02-01 at 10:01 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Johannes Berg
>> <johannes@sipsolutions.net> wrote:
>>> On Sun, 2010-01-31 at 22:03 +0100, Witold Sowa wrote:
>>>
>>>> Some time ago johill asked me if I would be interested in hacking on
>>>> adding WPS support to NetworkManager. Well, I would but I don't know
>>>> when I'll find some time for that. I don't know how much of work would
>>>> it require, but it possibly could be a topic of one of GSoC 2010
>>>> projects. I have no idea know if anybody would be willing to be a mentor
>>>> for such a project.
>>>
>>> Sounds like a good project to me, but I don't think I'd be a good mentor
>>> for since I'm not familiar with the NM codebase at all. As for how much
>>> work it would require, I think the basic client-side functionality could
>>> possibly be "too simple" for you, WPS has a lot of additional
>>> functionality (e.g. WPS support for the AP side).
>>
>> In case it helps, I believe all that would be required is the dbus
>> stuff, there are sample GUI examples of this already provided through
>> the wpa_supplicant wpa_gui.
>
> Here are couple of ideas (I don't think I will enter the program
> though):
>
> 1 - Make Ad-Hoc WPA networks work (with NM). This would involve changes
> in kernel, but I don't think will involve changes in hardware drivers.
>
> 2 - Allow a wireless card to associate to several APs at once (if they
> share the frequency).
> Implement this at least for ath5/9k. Madwifi had that feature. Maybe
> ath9k has. If it has that feature, test it.
> Implement proper GUI support in NM for that.

why would you want to do this?

> 3 - Create wardriving^Wwireless analysis tool.
> No, not for wardriving. I mean an application that shows and analyzes
> nicely the signal strength of nearby APs, and other features of it

it seems to me that kismet provides exactly this capability, what is it 
missing?

David Lang

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Maxim Levitsky]

On Mon, 2010-02-01 at 12:17 -0800, david@lang.hm wrote: 
> On Mon, 1 Feb 2010, Maxim Levitsky wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2010-02-01 at 10:01 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> >> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Johannes Berg
> >> <johannes@sipsolutions.net> wrote:
> >>> On Sun, 2010-01-31 at 22:03 +0100, Witold Sowa wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Some time ago johill asked me if I would be interested in hacking on
> >>>> adding WPS support to NetworkManager. Well, I would but I don't know
> >>>> when I'll find some time for that. I don't know how much of work would
> >>>> it require, but it possibly could be a topic of one of GSoC 2010
> >>>> projects. I have no idea know if anybody would be willing to be a mentor
> >>>> for such a project.
> >>>
> >>> Sounds like a good project to me, but I don't think I'd be a good mentor
> >>> for since I'm not familiar with the NM codebase at all. As for how much
> >>> work it would require, I think the basic client-side functionality could
> >>> possibly be "too simple" for you, WPS has a lot of additional
> >>> functionality (e.g. WPS support for the AP side).
> >>
> >> In case it helps, I believe all that would be required is the dbus
> >> stuff, there are sample GUI examples of this already provided through
> >> the wpa_supplicant wpa_gui.
> >
> > Here are couple of ideas (I don't think I will enter the program
> > though):
> >
> > 1 - Make Ad-Hoc WPA networks work (with NM). This would involve changes
> > in kernel, but I don't think will involve changes in hardware drivers.
> >
> > 2 - Allow a wireless card to associate to several APs at once (if they
> > share the frequency).
> > Implement this at least for ath5/9k. Madwifi had that feature. Maybe
> > ath9k has. If it has that feature, test it.
> > Implement proper GUI support in NM for that.
> 
> why would you want to do this?
To create a wireless router.
However, yes, I probably meant an access point and wireless client at
same time.



> 
> > 3 - Create wardriving^Wwireless analysis tool.
> > No, not for wardriving. I mean an application that shows and analyzes
> > nicely the signal strength of nearby APs, and other features of it
> 
> it seems to me that kismet provides exactly this capability, what is it 
> missing?
Didn't use this tool.
Also, like I said, this should be a analysis, and not wardriving/hacking
tool.
And with GUI.



Best regards,
Maxim Levitsky

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Holger Schurig]

> Also, like I said, this should be a analysis, and not
> wardriving/hacking tool.
> And with GUI.

Please define "analysis". What exactly should be analyzed?

Kismet can do:
* construct list of all beaconing APs and IBSS devices
* associate SSID to beacons because of assoc/auth req/resp
* construct a list of all stations around
* show used protection schema
* get simple packet statistics
* get simple signal level figures
* ...

But "analysis" can obviously be much more.

Some of the analysis should also be done on driver level, e.g. 
extend the nl80211-site-survey into mac80211 and add noise 
reporting to some drivers (I have something preliminary for 
ath5k). But also extend it to give channel occupation 
statistics.


And for a GUI, you could run kismet-server in the background and 
write a GUI (e.g. in Qt, so that it runs on X11/Mac/Win).

If the required analysis isn't easily put into kismet, you can of 
course write a new application if you please so :-)  I for 
example wrote a simple Qt application that has 25% of kismet's 
capability, but with a GUI. Unfortunately still Qt3.

-- 
http://www.holgerschurig.de

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Nick Bowler]

On 22:14 Mon 01 Feb     , Maxim Levitsky wrote:
> 2 - Allow a wireless card to associate to several APs at once (if they
> share the frequency). 
> Implement this at least for ath5/9k. Madwifi had that feature. Maybe
> ath9k has. If it has that feature, test it.

I haven't actually tried this particular case, but this is ostensibly
already supported by mac80211: iw allows you to create several wireless
interfaces that share a phy, which can then be configured into different
modes (I've used station + monitor successfully in the past).

-- 
Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/)

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Pat Erley]

On 02/01/10 17:12, Nick Bowler wrote:
> On 22:14 Mon 01 Feb     , Maxim Levitsky wrote:
>> 2 - Allow a wireless card to associate to several APs at once (if they
>> share the frequency). 
>> Implement this at least for ath5/9k. Madwifi had that feature. Maybe
>> ath9k has. If it has that feature, test it.
> 
> I haven't actually tried this particular case, but this is ostensibly
> already supported by mac80211: iw allows you to create several wireless
> interfaces that share a phy, which can then be configured into different
> modes (I've used station + monitor successfully in the past).
> 
With ath9k I have used:

AP + MP
AP + STA
AP + AP (Open and WPA2)

using both the debug interface to ath9k's internal multi-vif support 
(never tested MP with ath9k multi-vif) and mac80211.  I know that 
if you use the ath9k internal method, you can operate on multiple 
channels at a sacrifice to throughput.  I have not tested if mac80211
supports multiple channels.

It's as easy as:

AP+MP and AP+STA:
Start Hostapd
Create interface with iw
use second interface.

AP+AP
Configure hostapd for multiple bss
start hostapd

Pat Erley

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Holger Schurig]

> With ath9k I have used:
> 
> AP + MP
> AP + STA
> AP + AP (Open and WPA2)

Would you document this on the wireless WIKI at 
wireless.kernel.org ?

Maybe as different articles, so that this can be a basis of 
several "HOWTO" articles.

-- 
http://www.holgerschurig.de

Re: Linux wireless GSoC 2010 project ideas

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@gmail.com> wrote:
> Google has confirmed it will have a Google Summer of Code for 2010
> [1]. Last year we had a few projects suggested (4) and accepted (3)
> under the Linux Foundation sponsoring organization umbrella [2].
> Unfortunately out of the three projects that were approved only one
> completed successfully, that of the adding AP support to Network
> Manger. I haven't seen specific updates to the progress of that but I
> do know some patches were indeed submitted to help with this effort.
> Perhaps the student can elaborate more.
>
> The other projects that did not pass are up as suggestion for this
> year again, but am hoping there are more. If you do have a project
> idea please just go ahead and add your idea to the list of possible
> projects [3]; you don't have to fill out a full page for it for now
> but the more details you can add the better. If the Linux Foundation
> does give us a few slots I recommend we be a little more strict about
> acceptance criteria since our failure rate was pretty high (2/3) and
> it would be better to see other projects get accepted if we do not
> have the confidence our projects will be completed. One possibility to
> help with the success rate of our projects might be to narrow the
> scope down a little more. I think the testing and GeoClue project
> might have been a little too ambitious and although we did have pretty
> excited students we saw no progress at all.
>
> If you have ideas for projects just feel free to add to the wiki. We
> should strive to get all project ideas finalized by the middle of
> February, latest the end of February. Hopefully towards the end of
> February we can see who would be willing to mentor each project.
> Google plans on starting to accept would-be-mentor organization
> applications on  March 8th so we'll need our ideas finalized well
> before that so we can send them as suggestions to the Linux Foundation
> to see if we can get a few good project candidates accepted.
>
> [1] http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-discuss/browse_thread/thread/d839c0b02ac15b3f
> [2] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/GSoC/2009
> [3] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/GSoC/2010

Its the end of February, so we need to finalize the GSoC projects. I'm
only up to mentor the automation of testing, with a reduced scope of
using just having something register to nl80211 events and have a set
of tests cases run. Orbit testing and integration is completely
optional.

If anyone cares to mentor any of the other projects please let me know
as otherwise we just have one project on the 802.11 front.

  Luis