[pkg-wpa-devel] Debian 2.6.32 CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY, wireless-regdb and crda

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 4:25 PM, Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 6:03 AM, Kel Modderman <kel at otaku42.de> wrote:
>> On Thursday 04 February 2010 11:42:33 Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>>> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 6:10 PM, Paul Wise <pabs at debian.org> wrote:
>>> > On Mon, 2010-02-01 at 09:58 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> I can help with this only if no one else is up for it. I personally
>>> >> however find building a key on the fly for each build pretty pointless
>>> >> and would like to know if a package would be acceptable upstream on
>>> >> Debian if OpenSSL is used to allow administrators to add their own
>>> >> keys into the /etc/wireless-regdb/pubkeys/ dir for CRDA and from the
>>> >> start only trust John's key.
>>> >
>>> > As part of upstream, you're probably the best person to do the packaging
>>> > stuff for Debian.
>>>
>>> OK, in that case here is my first shot at this.
>>>
>>> http://wireless.kernel.org/download/wireless-regdb/debs/
>>> http://wireless.kernel.org/download/crda/debs/
>>>
>>> Tim -- notice both packages have a Replaces: wireless-crda. If debian
>>> upstreams both packages then I think it would be good to separate the
>>> packages as I am recommending for integration on Debian and for Ubuntu
>>> to also use the same debian packages as debian. I think this would
>>> mean also having the new Ubuntu kernels depend on these new packages
>>> instead of the old wireless-crda.
>>>
>>> The package is very simple, I took what I could from Kel's work but
>>> did leave in the signature check stuff, used openssl and also just
>>> used cdbs. The wireless-regdb does not change *that* often so I do not
>>> expect debian itself to need a custom regulatory database to be
>>> automatically built and propagated so I left all the watch stuff out
>>> and can do manual updates for now, I can commit to that for now. If
>>> that is a requirement however, I am not that familiar with new package
>>> policies and am unclear how to do that. I would prefer if we can get
>>> something started and uploaded for now which at least meets the
>>> requirements for integration into an eventual stable release, but
>>> that's just me.
>>>
>>> Please review and let me know what you think.
>>
>> These demonstrate that most of what I've attempted to explain about the
>> difficulties of getting this software into the Debian software pool in a
>> maintainable form has been taken lightly.
>>
>> To reiterate what I think is most important:
>> The software should be built from its preferable form of modification to
>> produce the resulting binary.
>
> What's the point?
>
>> This helps to make the source package available
>> to other developers to modify and rebuild without invasive packaging changes.
>
> The source will always be available and users can themselves apt-get
> source wireless-regdb and compile their own regdb at any time, just as
> with CRDA.

I've given this some more thought and while I think it is simply brain
dead to require a build from source to produce a binary with exactly
the same output except the signature I understand that asking for an
exception to rule on Debian based on common sense is still likely more
difficult to address than doing the temporary key thing and building
CRDA and wireless-regdb together as Fedora does.

I'll give that a shot next on my next break.

  Luis