[pkg-wpa-devel] cleaning up our suggested modes of use
Kel Modderman
kelrin at tpg.com.au
Sat Jul 22 01:22:57 UTC 2006
Hi,
Development of the "new order" wpasupplicant seems to be stabilising,
and I see now two clear modes of operation, and would like to propose a
clean up; consolidate documentation and code support for (IMO) the two
preferred modes of operation.
1. managed mode, all WPA settings given via the interfaces stanza for
any given network interface
2. roaming mode via wpa-roam/wpa_action: requires user supplied or
hand crafted wpa_supplicant.conf, and supports multiple locations
and network profiles
As part of the clean-up, I'd love to see the following changes:
* hand crafted action scripts, their documentation, examples and
support in ifupdown.sh in the form of conf_wpa_cli() (and some
variable names) should disappear. I would like to _completely_
purge this stuff. These are not really a good solution for anybody
and they have been condemned before [1]. They are hackish and I
really dislike conf_wpa_cli() and WPA_CLI_ACTFILE. This would help
clean up a congested NEWS.Debian file too.
* wpa-conf (our current mode #2), which is fairly useless on its
own, unless used with wpa_action or a hand crafted action script,
or your machine will _always_ connect at networking start-up, and
will _always_ use the same method of configuring the interface no
matter which network is actually active. It should not be
suggested as a independent mode of operation, but rather an
alternative way to setup the "managed" mode of operation.
* A slightly more comprehensive document, explaining in detail the
way the "managed" mode works along with quite a few real world
examples. This would help eliminate the doubts and misconceptions
currently floating around [2,3].
* An additional section to the above mentioned document, explaining
more about wpa-roam/wpa_action, how to set it up, how to use it,
what to do when problems arise along with some real world examples
or working configurations.
* Maybe put troubleshooting and problem reporting into an
independent document file. There are quite a few issues that can
arise, and I expect this document would grow and change
substantially over time.
Although I don't think our current documentation support is bad, I took
a step back and looked at it from a user's POV and saw room for
improvement. Additionally, until now, I've really neglected to help
Reinhard out with documentation much at all, so if anything is lacking,
confusing or misleading, I am the only person to blame ;-)
What do others think? When can I get started?
Thanks, Kel.
[1]
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-wpa-devel/2006-May/000417.html
[2] https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/wpasupplicant/+bug/44315
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=367655
More information about the Pkg-wpa-devel
mailing list