[regression] ath5k: Overrides regulatory domain set for cfg80211

[regression] ath5k: Overrides regulatory domain set for cfg80211

[Frans Pop]

In /etc/modprobe.d I have a file containing:
options cfg80211 ieee80211_regdom=EU

During boot this results in:
<snip>
cfg80211: Using static regulatory domain info
cfg80211: Regulatory domain: EU
	(start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
	(2402000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2000 mBm)
	(5170000 KHz - 5190000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
	(5190000 KHz - 5210000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
	(5210000 KHz - 5230000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
	(5230000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2000 mBm)
	(5490000 KHz - 5710000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 3000 mBm)
cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: EU
</snip>

But with 2.6.31-rc2 I then get (the lines marked with "!" are not there 
with .30):
<snip>
  ath5k 0000:02:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
  ath5k 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
  ath5k 0000:02:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
! ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x30
! ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map
! ath: Country alpha2 being used: AM
! ath: Regpair used: 0x30
  phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel'
  ath5k phy0: Atheros AR5213A chip found (MAC: 0x59, PHY: 0x43)
  ath5k phy0: RF2112B 2GHz radio found (0x46)
! cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: AM
</snip>

So it looks as if ath5k has started to override the regdomain I want.

Cheers,
FJP
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Re: [regression] ath5k: Overrides regulatory domain set for cfg80211

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Frans Pop<elendil-EIBgga6/0yRmR6Xm/wNWPw@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> In /etc/modprobe.d I have a file containing:
> options cfg80211 ieee80211_regdom=EU
>
> During boot this results in:
> <snip>
> cfg80211: Using static regulatory domain info
> cfg80211: Regulatory domain: EU
>        (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
>        (2402000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2000 mBm)
>        (5170000 KHz - 5190000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
>        (5190000 KHz - 5210000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
>        (5210000 KHz - 5230000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
>        (5230000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2000 mBm)
>        (5490000 KHz - 5710000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 3000 mBm)
> cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: EU
> </snip>
>
> But with 2.6.31-rc2 I then get (the lines marked with "!" are not there
> with .30):
> <snip>
>  ath5k 0000:02:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
>  ath5k 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
>  ath5k 0000:02:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
> ! ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x30
> ! ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map
> ! ath: Country alpha2 being used: AM
> ! ath: Regpair used: 0x30
>  phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel'
>  ath5k phy0: Atheros AR5213A chip found (MAC: 0x59, PHY: 0x43)
>  ath5k phy0: RF2112B 2GHz radio found (0x46)
> ! cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: AM
> </snip>
>
> So it looks

*looks*

> as if ath5k has started to override the regdomain I want.

It looks as if, but you a few things you should be aware of.

First, its not that anything is being ignored, user input is always
welcomed to help compliance you are just using a wrong ISO-3166
alpha2.

EU is not a country and as such is only left on older kernels with
CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY  enabled. So "EU" is deprecated for non
CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY based kernels now. For further
information please also read
Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt. Please use a valid
ISO-3166 alpha2 country code, I also advise to abandon the usage of
the ieee80211_regdom module parameter which we do eventually intend on
deprecating and if you know anyone using that please suggest the same.

Eventually, as you will read from the feature-removal schedule, we
intend on getting the Linux desktop to provide automatic hints of the
user's location through things like GeoClue. Reason for removing the
module parameter is its not the proper way to pass information to the
kernel, we now have a netlink interface for this exact purpose. Until
the desktop catches up we'll keep the ieee80211_regdom module
parameter, but the proper new way to set your regulatory domain as a
user is through iw [1] which does use netlink. Some distributions
(like Fedora) automatically set your country based on the timezone
information. So in the end you should not have to do this at all as a
user.

Another thing you should note is that if a driver has a regulatory
domain hint then the driver regulatory domain is always trusted, users
can *further* help compliance by selecting their country. What this
means since Atheros drivers do have EEPROM reading for the regulatory
domain that will be used first, thus enabling only channels allowed by
the programmed EEPROM. A user input can then only disable channel, but
never enable new ones. For devices with no regulatory at all the user
can have more of a say as no driver regulatory hint is available but
by default, in the absence of a driver regulatory hint, we world roam.

[1] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/iw

  Luis
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Re: [regression] ath5k: Overrides regulatory domain set for cfg80211

[Frans Pop]

Thanks for the quick reply and elaborate explanation Luis.

On Thursday 09 July 2009, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> It looks as if, but you a few things you should be aware of.

I was aware that things are changing in this area, but as I'm running 
Debian stable (Lenny) on this box I don't yet have a "new" userland and 
would like to see things continue to work correctly.
For Debian iw is available in testing/unstable, but not in stable.

It also means that I don't have the CRDA agent running, so IIUC currently 
the 'calls to CRDA' don't actually do anything for me. From that 
perspective I guess you could say nothing actually breaks.

> First, its not that anything is being ignored, user input is always
> welcomed to help compliance you are just using a wrong ISO-3166
> alpha2.
>
> EU is not a country and as such is only left on older kernels with
> CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY  enabled. So "EU" is deprecated for non
> CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY based kernels now.

I *do* have CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY set for exactly the reason that 
I know I don't yet have the new userland.

And if I change the country code to NL, I still get the same problem:
cfg80211: Using static regulatory domain info
cfg80211: Regulatory domain: US
        (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
        (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2700 mBm)
        (5170000 KHz - 5190000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
        (5190000 KHz - 5210000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
        (5210000 KHz - 5230000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
        (5230000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
        (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 3000 mBm)
  [Weird, when I specified EU I at least got the EU domain here.]
  [Now I specify NL and it gives me US; how's that an improvement?]
cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: NL
  [no agent, so this does not actually change anything]
ath5k 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
ath5k 0000:02:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x30
ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map
ath: Country alpha2 being used: AM
ath: Regpair used: 0x30
phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel'
ath5k phy0: Atheros AR5213A chip found (MAC: 0x59, PHY: 0x43)
ath5k phy0: RF2112B 2GHz radio found (0x46)
cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: AM
  [no agent, so this does not actually change anything]

> For further information please also read
> Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt. Please use a valid
> ISO-3166 alpha2 country code, I also advise to abandon the usage of
> the ieee80211_regdom module parameter which we do eventually intend on
> deprecating and if you know anyone using that please suggest the same.

As mentioned above I do not currently have the option of abandoning it.
Please continue to provide full backwards compatibility with "old" 
userland until all major distros have iw and crda in their stable 
releases.

> Eventually, as you will read from the feature-removal schedule, we
> intend on getting the Linux desktop to provide automatic hints of the
> user's location through things like GeoClue. Reason for removing the
> module parameter is its not the proper way to pass information to the
> kernel, we now have a netlink interface for this exact purpose. Until
> the desktop catches up we'll keep the ieee80211_regdom module
> parameter, but the proper new way to set your regulatory domain as a
> user is through iw [1] which does use netlink. Some distributions
> (like Fedora) automatically set your country based on the timezone
> information. So in the end you should not have to do this at all as a
> user.

Excellent for the future, but not yet an option for me.

> Another thing you should note is that if a driver has a regulatory
> domain hint then the driver regulatory domain is always trusted, users
> can *further* help compliance by selecting their country. What this 
> means since Atheros drivers do have EEPROM reading for the regulatory
> domain that will be used first, thus enabling only channels allowed by
> the programmed EEPROM.

That seems particularly bad in my case. For some weird reason this Trust 
PCMCIA card seems to have AM in its EEPROM, which is Armenia...
The card was bought in the Netherlands (NL), which is also where I live.

I have no idea what the regulations are in Armenia, but it seems damned 
silly to me to be restricted in this way just because of random hardware 
manufacturer's settings. I thought in the Linux world we'd long accepted 
that hardware manufacturers can't be trusted to get such things right.
Even ignoring the completely valid case of someone buying hardware in one 
country and then moving to another one.

I can to some extend understand respecting hardware settings for APs, but 
for a wireless NIC it seems a useless limitation. And I also suspect that 
manufacturers of (cheap) NICs are much more likely to get the hardware 
setting wrong (basically by not caring).

Cheers,
FJP

Re: [regression] ath5k: Overrides regulatory domain set for cfg80211

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Frans Pop<elendil-EIBgga6/0yRmR6Xm/wNWPw@public.gmane.org> wrote:

>> First, its not that anything is being ignored, user input is always
>> welcomed to help compliance you are just using a wrong ISO-3166
>> alpha2.
>>
>> EU is not a country and as such is only left on older kernels with
>> CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY  enabled. So "EU" is deprecated for non
>> CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY based kernels now.
>
> I *do* have CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY set for exactly the reason that
> I know I don't yet have the new userland.

That was the purpose for it after all.

> And if I change the country code to NL, I still get the same problem:
> cfg80211: Using static regulatory domain info
> cfg80211: Regulatory domain: US
>        (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
>        (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2700 mBm)
>        (5170000 KHz - 5190000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
>        (5190000 KHz - 5210000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
>        (5210000 KHz - 5230000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
>        (5230000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
>        (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 3000 mBm)
>  [Weird, when I specified EU I at least got the EU domain here.]

EU is a valid regulatory domain only when the relic option
CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY is used. When you use OLD_REG and "EU"
you get stuck to a statically defined regulatory domain in the kernel.

>  [Now I specify NL and it gives me US; how's that an improvement?]

Since you are using OLD_REG the default is "US", that was the behavior
prior to the new regulatory code so its left as is. So that is by
design following the old crap regulatory code design.

> cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: NL
>  [no agent, so this does not actually change anything]

Users of OLD_REG who do not have new userspace should stick to using
the 3 static regulatory domains:

  1) US *
  2) JP
  3) EU

Unfortunately, the default is "US".

> ath5k 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
> ath5k 0000:02:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
> ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x30
> ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map
> ath: Country alpha2 being used: AM
> ath: Regpair used: 0x30
> phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel'
> ath5k phy0: Atheros AR5213A chip found (MAC: 0x59, PHY: 0x43)
> ath5k phy0: RF2112B 2GHz radio found (0x46)
> cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: AM
>  [no agent, so this does not actually change anything]

Yes, by default you world roam when using an Atheros device and no
userspace agent is available. This is by design. ath5k previously used
to allow every single channel, restricting these further is not a
regression but more a regulatory fix on Linux. Its what allows us
vendors like Atheros to support Linux. For further information please
refer to:

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/vendors/VendorSupport
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/Regulatory

>> For further information please also read
>> Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt. Please use a valid
>> ISO-3166 alpha2 country code, I also advise to abandon the usage of
>> the ieee80211_regdom module parameter which we do eventually intend on
>> deprecating and if you know anyone using that please suggest the same.
>
> As mentioned above I do not currently have the option of abandoning it.

Yes you do, but you don't seem to want to do anything beyond what your
distribution offers, which is different.

Users of OLD_REG with Atheros devices will world roam because we do
care about regulatory compliance.

> Please continue to provide full backwards compatibility with "old"
> userland until all major distros have iw and crda in their stable
> releases.

That's already done. You are missing the big picture, that of proper
regulatory compliance. Fixing regulatory compliance is not a
regression, it means more devices get proper support in Linux and more
vendors can be attracted to do the same.

>> Eventually, as you will read from the feature-removal schedule, we
>> intend on getting the Linux desktop to provide automatic hints of the
>> user's location through things like GeoClue. Reason for removing the
>> module parameter is its not the proper way to pass information to the
>> kernel, we now have a netlink interface for this exact purpose. Until
>> the desktop catches up we'll keep the ieee80211_regdom module
>> parameter, but the proper new way to set your regulatory domain as a
>> user is through iw [1] which does use netlink. Some distributions
>> (like Fedora) automatically set your country based on the timezone
>> information. So in the end you should not have to do this at all as a
>> user.
>
> Excellent for the future, but not yet an option for me.
>
>> Another thing you should note is that if a driver has a regulatory
>> domain hint then the driver regulatory domain is always trusted, users
>> can *further* help compliance by selecting their country. What this
>> means since Atheros drivers do have EEPROM reading for the regulatory
>> domain that will be used first, thus enabling only channels allowed by
>> the programmed EEPROM.
>
> That seems particularly bad in my case. For some weird reason this Trust
> PCMCIA card seems to have AM in its EEPROM, which is Armenia...
> The card was bought in the Netherlands (NL), which is also where I live.

Yeah the short story of that is Armenia and Netherlands both have the
same regulatory rules, the first alpha2 that matched the same group
was picked up, which just so happened to be Armenia. In the future it
will be easier if cards are just programmed with the alpha2 country
code or with a world regulatory domain code, and just abandon the
grouping idea. That is something we will have to look forward to
change and promote for future device. What counts for regulatory
purposes is your device is complaint. The alternative was to keep all
the regulatory information statically in the kernel for each
regulatory group for Atheros devices.

> I have no idea what the regulations are in Armenia, but it seems damned
> silly to me to be restricted in this way just because of random hardware
> manufacturer's settings. I thought in the Linux world we'd long accepted
> that hardware manufacturers can't be trusted to get such things right.

The world of Linux with wireless is in its diapers when it comes to
regulatory compliance, we just started. And a key feature to
regulatory compliance with today's legislation is to trust the
device's origin. As stupid as it may seem -- current legislation puts
vendors in positions to assume that some devices will never go to
another country. The law is obviously outdated but companies cannot
simply start being flexible without legislation actually changing.

What we are doing with Linux is paving the way for the future for a
decent regulatory infrastructure which makes sense and allows dynamic
communication and roaming. Slowly the hope is legislation will catch
on.

> Even ignoring the completely valid case of someone buying hardware in one
> country and then moving to another one.

Yes, I agree this is silly as well, but legislation needs to be
respected. Devices which have potential to roam to different countries
tend to get custom world regulatory domains assigned to them.

We have a good world roaming infrastructure with cfg80211 now, but you
have to kiss OLD_REG goodbye to use it.

> I can to some extend understand respecting hardware settings for APs, but
> for a wireless NIC it seems a useless limitation.

You are right to a certain degree. The thing is wireless cards *can*
be used as APs on a regular desktops. Perhaps not with iwlagn, but
with ath5k and ath9k you can do AP, IBSS, Mesh, all of which actually
do start transmit with out any AP being around. For these cases you
*do* need to ensure proper regulatory compliance. And we haven't even
touched on DFS!

> And I also suspect that
> manufacturers of (cheap) NICs are much more likely to get the hardware
> setting wrong (basically by not caring).

Sure, which is why we did the work we did on Linux. Regardless of how
sloppy the wireless vendors are today Linux has IMHO the best
regulatory infrastructure of all OSes. Nice thing about it too is most
of it is licensed under a permissive license so even the people in
Redmond could actually pick up a few things or two (yeah right)

  Luis
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Re: [regression] ath5k: Overrides regulatory domain set for cfg80211

[Frans Pop]

Thanks again for your elaborate explanation Louis.

On Thursday 09 July 2009, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> EU is a valid regulatory domain only when the relic option
> CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY is used. When you use OLD_REG and "EU"
> you get stuck to a statically defined regulatory domain in the kernel.
>
> >  [Now I specify NL and it gives me US; how's that an improvement?]
>
> Since you are using OLD_REG the default is "US", that was the behavior
> prior to the new regulatory code so its left as is. So that is by
> design following the old crap regulatory code design.
>
> > cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: NL
> >  [no agent, so this does not actually change anything]
>
> Users of OLD_REG who do not have new userspace should stick to using
> the 3 static regulatory domains:
>
>   1) US *
>   2) JP
>   3) EU

Right, so the EU I had originally was correct after all :-)

> >> For further information please also read
> >> Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt. Please use a valid
> >> ISO-3166 alpha2 country code, I also advise to abandon the usage of
> >> the ieee80211_regdom module parameter which we do eventually intend
> >> on deprecating and if you know anyone using that please suggest the
> >> same.
> >
> > As mentioned above I do not currently have the option of abandoning
> > it.
>
> Yes you do, but you don't seem to want to do anything beyond what your
> distribution offers, which is different.

You're right :-)
However, I am also a Debian Developer and Debian may (just as we did for 
Etch), at some point want to offer a newer kernel than the current .26 
for stable (possibly .31). From that PoV it is important to ensure there 
are no incompatibilities with what's in Debian stable.
For that reason I am very conservative when it comes to installer newer or 
backported versions of packages.

> > That seems particularly bad in my case. For some weird reason this
> > Trust PCMCIA card seems to have AM in its EEPROM, which is Armenia...
> > The card was bought in the Netherlands (NL), which is also where I
> > live.
>
> Yeah the short story of that is Armenia and Netherlands both have the
> same regulatory rules, the first alpha2 that matched the same group
> was picked up, which just so happened to be Armenia. In the future it
> will be easier if cards are just programmed with the alpha2 country
> code or with a world regulatory domain code, and just abandon the
> grouping idea. That is something we will have to look forward to
> change and promote for future device. What counts for regulatory
> purposes is your device is complaint. The alternative was to keep all
> the regulatory information statically in the kernel for each
> regulatory group for Atheros devices.

Ah! I had no idea about that and I guess that this is the real issue here: 
a simple usability problem. If I had seen the correct countrycode (NL 
instead of AM), I probably never would have reported a regression. What 
prompted my mail was that, from a user PoV, the country being selected 
looked to be completely broken. How am I, as a simple user, supposed to 
know that Armenia uses the same domain as the Netherlands and that what 
the driver is doing is actually 100% correct (and even that my PCMCIA 
card is not as broken as I thought)?

Would it be possible to improve the info presented by the kernel? Maybe 
print an extra line with a list of countries that use the selected reg 
domain (depends I guess on what's the max. nr. of countries that share a 
domain). Or at least indicate that the country code is a somewhat random 
choice.

> > I can to some extend understand respecting hardware settings for APs,
> > but for a wireless NIC it seems a useless limitation.
>
> You are right to a certain degree. The thing is wireless cards *can*
> be used as APs on a regular desktops. Perhaps not with iwlagn, but
> with ath5k and ath9k you can do AP, IBSS, Mesh, all of which actually
> do start transmit with out any AP being around. For these cases you
> *do* need to ensure proper regulatory compliance. And we haven't even
> touched on DFS!

Well, IIUC you do know what mode the card is being used in, so in theory 
you could distinguish between them. I'm not pushing for that though.

End conclusion is that there is no regression and no backwards 
compatibility issue (which is good news), just a usability issue.

Thanks,
FJP
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Re: [regression] ath5k: Overrides regulatory domain set for cfg80211

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 4:43 AM, Frans Pop<elendil@planet.nl> wrote:

>> >> For further information please also read
>> >> Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt. Please use a valid
>> >> ISO-3166 alpha2 country code, I also advise to abandon the usage of
>> >> the ieee80211_regdom module parameter which we do eventually intend
>> >> on deprecating and if you know anyone using that please suggest the
>> >> same.
>> >
>> > As mentioned above I do not currently have the option of abandoning
>> > it.
>>
>> Yes you do, but you don't seem to want to do anything beyond what your
>> distribution offers, which is different.
>
> You're right :-)
> However, I am also a Debian Developer and Debian may (just as we did for
> Etch), at some point want to offer a newer kernel than the current .26
> for stable (possibly .31).

That'd be nice!

> From that PoV it is important to ensure there
> are no incompatibilities with what's in Debian stable.

And there shouldn't be.

Side note:

I'd suggest to disable OLD_REG and provide crda and iw on your shiny
new kernel. In the absence of crda you still have a really good world
regulatory domain with good world roaming capabilities. For setting
the regulatory domain you can look at what Fedora folks did with the
timezone info until the desktop catches up (geoclue and whatever).

> For that reason I am very conservative when it comes to installer newer or
> backported versions of packages.

Sure.

>> > That seems particularly bad in my case. For some weird reason this
>> > Trust PCMCIA card seems to have AM in its EEPROM, which is Armenia...
>> > The card was bought in the Netherlands (NL), which is also where I
>> > live.
>>
>> Yeah the short story of that is Armenia and Netherlands both have the
>> same regulatory rules, the first alpha2 that matched the same group
>> was picked up, which just so happened to be Armenia. In the future it
>> will be easier if cards are just programmed with the alpha2 country
>> code or with a world regulatory domain code, and just abandon the
>> grouping idea. That is something we will have to look forward to
>> change and promote for future device. What counts for regulatory
>> purposes is your device is complaint. The alternative was to keep all
>> the regulatory information statically in the kernel for each
>> regulatory group for Atheros devices.
>
> Ah! I had no idea about that and I guess that this is the real issue here:
> a simple usability problem. If I had seen the correct countrycode (NL
> instead of AM), I probably never would have reported a regression. What
> prompted my mail was that, from a user PoV, the country being selected
> looked to be completely broken. How am I, as a simple user, supposed to
> know that Armenia uses the same domain as the Netherlands and that what
> the driver is doing is actually 100% correct (and even that my PCMCIA
> card is not as broken as I thought)?

Yeah, its a good point.

> Would it be possible to improve the info presented by the kernel? Maybe
> print an extra line with a list of countries that use the selected reg
> domain (depends I guess on what's the max. nr. of countries that share a
> domain). Or at least indicate that the country code is a somewhat random
> choice.

Perhaps an informative "group regulatory domain" printk may make
sense, you're right.

>> > I can to some extend understand respecting hardware settings for APs,
>> > but for a wireless NIC it seems a useless limitation.
>>
>> You are right to a certain degree. The thing is wireless cards *can*
>> be used as APs on a regular desktops. Perhaps not with iwlagn, but
>> with ath5k and ath9k you can do AP, IBSS, Mesh, all of which actually
>> do start transmit with out any AP being around. For these cases you
>> *do* need to ensure proper regulatory compliance. And we haven't even
>> touched on DFS!
>
> Well, IIUC you do know what mode the card is being used in, so in theory
> you could distinguish between them. I'm not pushing for that though.
>
> End conclusion is that there is no regression and no backwards
> compatibility issue (which is good news), just a usability issue.

Yup.

  Luis

Re: [regression] ath5k: Overrides regulatory domain set for cfg80211

[Holger Schurig]

> For Debian iw is available in testing/unstable, but not in
> stable.

Make an effort to get it into backports.org ....   and AFAIK, 
Kernel 2.6.30xxx isn't in Debian stable either. So by using a 
different kernel you've moved away from a purely "Debian stable" 
setup anyway.

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Re: [regression] ath5k: Overrides regulatory domain set for cfg80211

[Holger Schurig]

> Eventually, as you will read from the feature-removal
> schedule, we intend on getting the Linux desktop to provide
> automatic hints of the user's location through things like
> GeoClue.

Please think about embedded people. We don't need no stinkin' 
geoclue. We'll need a kernel parameter or an commant for "iw" or 
some other netlink based command.

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Re: [regression] ath5k: Overrides regulatory domain set for cfg80211

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:05 AM, Holger
Schurig<hs4233@mail.mn-solutions.de> wrote:
>> Eventually, as you will read from the feature-removal
>> schedule, we intend on getting the Linux desktop to provide
>> automatic hints of the user's location through things like
>> GeoClue.
>
> Please think about embedded people. We don't need no stinkin'
> geoclue. We'll need a kernel parameter or an commant for "iw" or
> some other netlink based command.

Note I wrote "Linux desktop" not Linux embedded. And we already have a
nl80211 command for this exact purpose. You can even use
wpa_supplicant if you don't want to use iw.

I wouldn't be surprised to see geoclue in embedded devices though.

  Luis