On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 04:11 +0200, Maxim Levitsky wrote: > Here I want to ask and summarize problems we found in thread > 'driver_nl80211 broken again' > > > First of all it it known that lifetime of connection to access point is > typically: > > authentication request/response > association request/response > > EAPOL 4 way handshake (for WPA) > > <session> > > disassociation > deauthentication > > Today kernel explicitly requests the driver to perform both > disassociation and deauthentication in that order. > It is also possible to do disassociation and then association, skipping > the authentication step. > > However, currently wpa_supplicant assumes that once it called > wpa_drv_disassociate it can again start the complete connect sequence > from the authentication. > > In fact I have carefully studied the code and found that calls to > wpa_supplicant_deauthenticate (which is the only user of > wpa_drv_deauthenticate) only happen at deinitialization of wireless > interface and when wpa_supplicant really has to do it, that is if there > is a failure (mic failure for example). > > My hacky patch that was rejected on the grounds that it is not right to > introduce the driver dependent behavior might actually be the correct > solution. It just makes the wpa_supplicant_disassociate do both > disassociation and deauthentication, as was always assumed by the > wpa_supplicant core. > > > Or kernel should became smarter and do the work for wpa_supplicant. > > In this case it should work like that: > > If mac80211 is already authenticated to the AP that was requested, it > should just return success. > However currently (and I was told that this is feature, not a bug) > mac80211 would flatly refuse to do any scanning while it is in > authenticated but not associated state. > > If it isn't authenticated to new AP then, new authentication should be > made. > (and old one can be kept, but removed after a timeout) > > > And the last question. > When do you plan to switch officially the wpa_supplicant to > driver_nl80211? > > Currently it has this issue, and another issue that it (nl80211) reports > signal levels in another format that NetworkManager doesn't understand. > > Other that that it is faster, and especially it allows me to bring > network up, when I press rfkill button within 4 seconds or less. > > > Best regards, > Maxim Levitsky > Nobody uses driver_nl80211 but me? Best regards, Maxim Levitsky -- 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
