Re: [PATCH 5/7] d80211: indicate if unassociate/radio off status

[Dan Williams <dcbw@redhat.com>]

On Thu, 2006-09-21 at 12:47 -0700, mabbas wrote:
> Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-09-21 at 19:01 +0200, Jiri Benc wrote:
> >   
> >> On Mon, 28 Aug 2006 13:49:35 -0700, mabbas wrote:
> >>     
> >>> This patch indicate unassociated and radio off status
> >>> in name field
> >>>       
> >> NAK.
> >>
> >> Fix SIOCGIWAP handler instead.
> >>     
> >
> > Right; the _one_ place anyone should ever have to check for unassociated
> > status is SIOCGIWAP.  That's it.  Lets not put stuff in two different
> > places.  If it's all 0s, all 4s (stupid prism) or all Fs (i forget who
> > does that), it's invalid and you're not connected.
> >
> > About the worst thing we can start doing is having to parse arbitrary
> > strings to find out driver/card status.  That's the same problem with
> > "<hidden>" which hope DIES DIES DIES with d80211.  If the AP is hidden,
> > then it has a _blank_ SSID, not hacked to "<hidden>".
> >
> > For radio off, that may be a legitimate thing that's not covered in WE
> > yet.  But isn't that the domain of SIOCGIWPOWER, or is that just used to
> > set PM modes and not return current status? [1]
> >
> > Dan
> >
> > [1] which would seem like an oversight to correct in nl80211
> >
> >   
> 
> SIOCGIWPOWER is for power save mode it has nothing to do with radio off, we can 
> indicate radio off in txpower field i guess. I have question regarding SIOCGIWAP. if
> I do #iwconfig ap 00:13:23:87:150:150, wont iwconfig always show  00:13:23:87:150:150 
> for SIOCGIWAP regardless if we associated or not? can we display blank in this case to 
> indicate not connected?

That's kind a hole in the WE API.  In this case, I think, SIOCGIWAP
should always return the BSSID of the current association, or none if
there is no association.

Doing an iwconfig ap xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx should make the driver internally
locked to that BSSID, such that until you clear that lock, SIOCGIWAP
should only show either that BSSID or 00:00:00:00:00:00.  SIOCGIWAP
should not return a valid BSSID when there is no association.

Hopefully nl80211 can fix this omission in WE.

Dan

> Mohamed 
> 
>  
> 
> >>  Jiri
> >>
> >>