Wifi support for iproute2

Wifi support for iproute2

[Stephan Maka]

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Hello

I've always felt uncomfortable by the usability of the wireless-tools
(iwconfig, iwlist), but I really love iproute2. That's why I started to
implement "ip wifi".

My GIT tree is located at:
  http://cthulhu.c3d2.de/~astro/git/iproute2.git/

I wonder if this has a chance to get merged in iproute2 somewhen at all,
or if this is completely inappropriate functionality for this tool.

Note that this my first contribution to a Linux-specific tool, *any*
hints about style and conventions demanded here are welcome.

I'm sure not everyone will use this instead of wireless-tools, and a few
even don't want it compiled in and linked with iwlib. Should I make this
optional through a Makefile variable?

If noone else contributes not all of wireless-tools will be implemented,
it's just too much. But basic stuff for configuring a Wifi card is
already there.

Everyone told me dscape is near, but I hope iwlib will be ported then.


Stephan

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Re: Wifi support for iproute2

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 02:26:53 +0100
Stephan Maka <stephan@spaceboyz.net> wrote:

> Hello
> 
> I've always felt uncomfortable by the usability of the wireless-tools
> (iwconfig, iwlist), but I really love iproute2. That's why I started
> to implement "ip wifi".
> 
> My GIT tree is located at:
>   http://cthulhu.c3d2.de/~astro/git/iproute2.git/
> 
> I wonder if this has a chance to get merged in iproute2 somewhen at
> all, or if this is completely inappropriate functionality for this
> tool.
> 
> Note that this my first contribution to a Linux-specific tool, *any*
> hints about style and conventions demanded here are welcome.
> 
> I'm sure not everyone will use this instead of wireless-tools, and a
> few even don't want it compiled in and linked with iwlib. Should I
> make this optional through a Makefile variable?
> 
> If noone else contributes not all of wireless-tools will be
> implemented, it's just too much. But basic stuff for configuring a
> Wifi card is already there.
> 
> Everyone told me dscape is near, but I hope iwlib will be ported then.

Don't waste your time with a tool that uses the exist wext API.
But a tool that could use cfg80211 would be useful. After the wireless
summit in Jan, I put it on my "interesting ideas" list.

Re: Wifi support for iproute2

[Johannes Berg]

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On Sun, 2007-03-04 at 02:26 +0100, Stephan Maka wrote:

> Everyone told me dscape is near, but I hope iwlib will be ported then.

Just a few short notes to add to Stephen's reply. dscape (or mac80211
now, it's been renamed) is going to migrate away from wireless
extensions, in fact, wext is going to loom in the "backward
compatibility" corner. That's quite some time off, but there's no point
in writing new tools for it anyway.

Within the kernel, cfg80211 is (hopefully!) going to replace wext, with
the main userspace API being nl80211 (but some sysfs stuff too.)

If you look at http://git.sipsolutions.net/pynl80211.git/ (usable as
both a git and gitweb url) you'll find a python nl80211 tool I hacked up
for some basic stuff to configure things via nl80211. Most of that
doesn't actually work yet, of course, since mac80211 still uses wext
internally, but as soon as we get enough manpower that'll change.

johannes

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Re: Wifi support for iproute2

[Stephan Maka]

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Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> Don't waste your time with a tool that uses the exist wext API.
> But a tool that could use cfg80211 would be useful. After the wireless
> summit in Jan, I put it on my "interesting ideas" list.

Ok.

I would be happy if anyone will notify me when this is available without
going too far from a mainstream kernel.


Stephan

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