Hi I'd like to talk some about the patch. I've noticed that 32bit compiled wireless tools on 64 bit kernel (PS3 runs with powerpc 64 kernel) sometimes did not work properly than I expected, especially 'iwlist eth0 scanning' would show messed results. Although I also noticed there was no problem found if I'd used 64bit wireless tools, I thought it was good that I first investigated this problem some before I started to work on rewriting PS3 wireless support. After some investigation, I found there was a mistake (which I believed) in the table for handlers to deal with 32bit ioctls. Two handlers were defined simultaneously for one wireless ioctl as you can see. After brief look into these handlers, I thought the HANDLE_IOCTL(SIOCGIWPRIV, do_wireless_ioctl) seemed to be better. Then I made the patch that kept the latter (do_wireless_ioctl) and submitted it. And after that, I noticed that at least one of the causes of this iwlist problem was that the size and alignment of iw_point structure differed between 32bit and 64bit. So I sent a mail that asked how we should deal with it. Then I got a reply that people in this ml had already knew it and worked around in userland applications. So I tried to use wirelesstools 29 pre22 and found that its iwlist showed reasonable scan results and I did no further test nor investigation. With these experiences, I thought that wireless experts here had already agreement that it should be fixed basically by working around in userland apps, and that I'd just brought up the settled issue again. Some days later, John gave me the mail that referred about my patch. I understood that he asked me that only the former COMPATIBLE_IOCTL one was used, but the latter HANDLE_IOCTL never used due to the nature of compat_sys_ioctl(). That was exactly what I'd found, so I replied yes. I meant yes in that sense. In second half of the mail, I understood the he asked how about keeping used one (COMPATIBLE_IOCTL) instead of HANDLE_IOCTL one, considering compatibilities. As I can esteem the idea that sometimes the compatibilities are more important than changing something and I didn't think my patch could address all problems of the issue and I had much time to test more, I replied with the intention that I didn't stick to the patch if all userland application could work around perfectly. I should search much closer whether similar argument or reports existed before sending my patch/mail, when I think of it now. Sorry for my not supplying suffcient information for my patch and/or concern. -- Masakazu MOKUNO - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
