On 05/11/2013 09:35 AM, Arend van Spriel wrote: > On 05/11/2013 02:52 AM, JoSH Lehan wrote: >> It seems I can choose to use the mac80211/cfg80211 that came with the >> kernel,*or*, the mac80211/cfg80211 that come with compat-drivers. Is >> this correct? I'll have to maintain these two mac80211/cfg80211 >> drivers in separate directories, since they have the same name, and it >> will complicate my detection/loading script, but if there's no other >> way, then this is what needs to be done. > > Luis may correct me, but I think you are correct. compat-drivers > provides a compat.ko which is the glue between new drivers and your > kernel. With the new drivers you get new features provided you have new > mac80211/cfg80211 as well. Hence the glue is between wireless modules > (including mac80211/cfg80211) and rest of your kernel. On a non-embedded > system the compat-driver modules are installed in a separate folder > /lib/modules/<your_kernel_version/updates. depmod is run during the > install in which this folder takes precedence. > > Not sure what your use-case is. You have a system in which different > wireless devices may be plugged in or ...? You can only use mac80211/cfg80211 from compat-driver *or* the kernel. There was a plan to rename all exported symbols and make it possible to use both at the same time, but no one fully implemented it. The API between mac80211/cfg80211 is not stable and changing very often to implement new features so it is not possible to use new drivers with an older version of mac80211/cfg80211 or the other way around. compat.ko is not a glue it is more a module containing all the functions not available in the kernel comopat-drivers was compiled against, but needed by some drivers or frameworks like mac80211. You should take all wireless drivers using mac80211/cfg80211 from compat-drivers and not use the in kernel versions any more. >> Could it be because I cross-compile compat-drivers? Looking at the >> installation scripts, it's clearly intended to be ran by the end user >> to replace the drivers in their distribution with updated drivers, and >> it could be that I missed something when tweaking it to cross-compile >> the drivers and not install them locally. > > Probably not, provided you build it for your kernel version. > >> Has anybody else tried to use compat-drivers to build for an embedded >> system? If so, what's the recommended solution? How to solve the >> mac80211/cfg80211 problem, where the kernel-compiled mac80211/cfg80211 >> modules conflict with their equivalent compat-drivers modules? > > Depends what you call an embedded system. We used it to run our driver > on Android. Just cross-compiling it and install it on the system is what > we did. Recently, there have been a number of people walking that path > and contacting us. It may be an idea to have a compat-drivers feature to > generate Android tarballs as it is always running a few kernel versions > behind mainline. > > Regards, > Arend -- 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
