[pkg-wpa-devel] Removal Of IPW Driver

[Will Daniels]

Hi Kel,

Actually I was referring to the sources distributed by the OEM at:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=1&PFid=1&Level=6&Conn=5&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true#352

These are still maintained (to some degree), the driver works very well 
and appears to be widely used, as I discovered when I patched it to 
compile on the 2.6.24 kernel recently.

I was not aware that the new mac80211 version is now in the 2.6.25 
kernel (the sources I got from the rtl-wifi project homepage didn't 
compile for me on 2.6.24 either), but certainly if that's the case, my 
point about continuing to build the ipw back-end in newer wpasupplicant 
packages is redundant.

Furthermore, I agree that it is preferable to support the more 
progressive mac80211 driver, although I don't think it's fair to say 
that the wpasupplicant package advertising support for the older driver 
would be a "disservice" of any kind.

In any case, the point seems moot and I thank you for taking the time to 
reply to my concerns.

Regards,
Will


Kel Modderman wrote:
> On Tuesday 29 April 2008 23:00:12 Will Daniels wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>> Hope I'm mailing this to the right place, sorry if it's not :)
>>
>> I was just looking at the Debian Changelog for the wpasupplicant package 
>> and noticed this entry for 0.6.1~git20071119-1:
>>
>> * No longer build "ndiswrapper" or "ipw" backends. Etch shipped with a
>> kernel in which neither of these backends could work (> Linux 2.6.14) so
>> it is about time we no longer pretended to support for them.
>>
>> Even though the Intel IPW drivers support WPA through WEXT now, there is 
>> at least one other driver that I know of, r8180 (Realtek) which was 
>> originally based on the IPW driver code (before WEXT-18 extensions) and 
>> so supports WPA using the IPW backend in wpa_supplicant, but not yet via 
>> WEXT.  So, the ipw backend really needs to stay there or at least be 
>> made available as a separate package or something.
>>     
>
> The linux kernel drivers supporting realtek wireless lan chipsets (rtl8180,
> rtl8187) that are in active development are mac80211 based. I think
> you may be referring to a driver that is no longer maintained[0] which forked
> a very early version of the Intel ieee80211 stack and is very likely to be
> buggy and only get more buggy as it bitrots. In my opinion, if the
> wpasupplicant package advertised support for this driver it would be
> doing a disservice to its users.
>
> rtl8180 first appeared in Linux 2.6.25, so it is very new. 
>
> [0] http://rtl8180-sa2400.sourceforge.net/
>
>   
>> The comment about neither the ipw nor ndiswrapper backends being able to 
>> work in kernels above 2.6.14 has me a little confused, since I'm 
>> currently using the ipw backend in Ubuntu Hardy with kernel 2.6.24 
>> (wpa_supplicant v0.5.8)...
>>     
>
> ndiswrapper didn't expose it's private ioctl's to any kernel version past
> 2.6.14 or 2.6.15, and they were later removed. Jouni Malinen and I have
> discussed why driver_ndiswrapper.c still exists and that discussion is on
> public record[1].
>
> [1] http://lists.shmoo.com/pipermail/hostap/2007-November/016566.html
>
> Below is an extract from src/drivers/driver_ipw.c[2] file from wpa_supplicant
> sources:
>
> * Please note that ipw2100/2200 drivers change to use generic Linux wireless
>  * extensions if the kernel includes support for WE-18 or newer (Linux 2.6.13
>  * or newer). driver_wext.c should be used in those cases.
>
> [2] http://w1.fi/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=hostap.git;a=blob;f=src/drivers/driver_ipw.c;hb=HEAD
>
> Kel.
>   
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