This is a list of information to help those students looking into the Linux wireless GSoC 2009 "Automation of testing using mac80211_hwsim and Orbit" project [0], part of the Linux Foundation set of GSoC projects: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Google_Summer_of_Code_2009 In anyone has ideas to further help this project please just feel free to chime in. I'm adding other potential mentors to the project, Maxx Ott which might be signing up as a mentor for Orbit-related stuff and Subrata Modak which seems to be familiar with the Linux testing project (LTP). I'll also recommend to subscribe to the wiki page for the test project so you can get e-mails on changes to the wiki page. Students can start by becoming familiar with iw [1] and using wpa_supplicant with the nl80211 driver. We eventually want to not depend on wireless extensions so the new cutting edge tests will all be based on the new nl80211 stuff which both iw and wpa_supplicant can use. iw is strictly nl80211 based. Of course we should still have things to test wireless-extensions but soon it may be possible to live completely without them for new cfg80211 based drivers. Then you can look at starting to quickly create an AP with the different encryption options, and use a STA to associate to that AP quickly and easily as well. I have some old scripts which did this which you may feel free to use/modify/disregard. There's one for AP [2] and one for STA [3]. Jouni also has some stuff for this and you can check it out via his git gree: git://w1.fi/srv/git/hostap.git In there check out the hostap/mac80211_hwsim/tests/ directory. A starting point would be to extend this with simple scripts which let you test mac80211_hwsim to do certain individual taks one at a time. For example gettings association completed and transfering some amount of data using the different encryptions algorithms available would test the software encryption with mac80211. That would be a good first easy step to become familiar with what we want to accomplish with the project. The idea is to build a list of tests which we can automate and run to test against the wireless-testing tree completely in software. Once these tests are in place we then use them to also test against individual drivers using real hardware. Since its not expected that students will have all the wireless hardware available we can leverage the kindness of folks at Orbit [4] and use sandboxes [5] there during a reservation to test the different hardware present there. Fortunately the list of cards available in the Sandboxes [6] is pretty decent and can grow. Go read the Orbit developer's section [7]. This is the hardware present so far: * Atheros AR5002X Mini PCI 802.11a/b/g (AR5212 MAC Baseband Processor + AR5112 Dual-band Radio-on-a-Chip) * Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection Mini PCI 802.11a/b/g * GNURadio - USB (we won't be testing this) * zd1211 - USB 802.11g * RTL8185 - PCI 802.11bg * ISL3890 - Mini PCI 802.11bg (prism54) * Marvell Libertas 8388 802.11 USB We may also have Intel 5000 11n, and I think we have some 11n Atheros stuff too and if not I'll be sure to mail them out ASAP. Surely this will depend on coordination with the Orbit folks and we cannot simply expect everything to be there but its a starting point. Once we have a set of scripts we are happy with for mac80211_hwsim we can save an image for re-use at Orbit with these scripts and that image can be installed during a reserved time-slot for testing. Its advised the automation of testing to make use of Orbit's own automation infrastructure called OMF. These are used at Orbit for research purposes but just as they are used for research purposes it can also be used to automate tests. Some scripts may need to be ported to use OMF. To start becoming familiar with the Orbit testbed and using OMF you can read their tutorials [8]. I think OMF is completely open source, Maxx correct me if I'm wrong. If so then we can always end up contributing to it to enhance it should that be possible and needed. So the end goal is to have a nice list of tests which we can run on for mac80211, the driver infrastructure (through mac80211_hwsim) and also for each driver either through Orbit or manually so users can run them at home or so that the Linux Testing Project [9] can use. In the end it would be nice to have a page online which we can go to and see some results of tests for each driver and also for mac80211 internals. If anyone has other idease or documentation that may be usable for the students please chime in. Luis [0] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/GSoC/2009/Automation_of_testing [1] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/iw [2] http://www.winlab.rutgers.edu/~mcgrof/qa/create-ap.sh.txt [3] http://www.winlab.rutgers.edu/~mcgrof/qa/create-client.sh.txt [4] http://www.orbit-lab.org/ [5] http://www.orbit-lab.org/wiki/SandBoxes [6] http://www.orbit-lab.org/wiki/SandboxMap [7] http://www.orbit-lab.org/wiki/Documentation/Developers [8] http://www.orbit-lab.org/wiki/Tutorial [9] http://ltp.sourceforge.net/ -- 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
