r92su: status and will it be merged anytime soon?
Good afternoon,
I was playing in r8712u because I wanted to send a patch to conditionally silence a flooding netdev_info(). But then I found out on http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/rtl819x that r8712u was to be replaced by r92su.
From its git tree, it seems no commit were added since 4 months ago. Could someone tell me in what shape is this new driver? Is there any plan to merge it (under staging I suppose) soon?
Thank you,
Signature · 1 line
Alexandre Demers
Quoted 10 lines · Alexandre Demers
Good afternoon,
I was playing in r8712u because I wanted to send a patch to conditionally silence a flooding
netdev_info(). But then I found out on
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/rtl819x that r8712u was to be replaced by r92su.From its git tree, it seems no commit were added since 4 months ago. Could
someone tell me in what shape is this new driver? Is there any plan to merge it (under staging I suppose) soon?
As nothing has happened with that GitHub account for several months, my guess is that it will not be merged any time soon.
It would make little sense to replace one staging driver (r8712u) with a different one. The only thing that makes sense is for it to use mac80211 and be merged in the regular drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi tree.
Larry
Ok, so if I was to work on one of the drivers, I should continue with the one under staging, isn't it? Because, let's say I would have some spare time to invest somewhere, I could port the driver to use mac80211, maybe with some support. I'd prefer to do it only once... on the good driver.
Alexandre Demers
Quoted 20 lines · Larry Finger
Quoted 11 lines · Alexandre Demers
Good afternoon,
I was playing in r8712u because I wanted to send a patch to conditionally silence a flooding
netdev_info(). But then I found out on
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/rtl819x that r8712u was to be replaced by r92su.From its git tree, it seems no commit were added since 4 months ago.
Could
someone tell me in what shape is this new driver? Is there any plan to merge it (under staging I suppose) soon?As nothing has happened with that GitHub account for several months, my guess is that it will not be merged any time soon.
It would make little sense to replace one staging driver (r8712u) with a different one. The only thing that makes sense is for it to use mac80211 and be merged in the regular
drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifitree.Larry
Hello,
Quoted 8 lines · On Saturday 02 November 2013 16:19:16 Alexandre Demers wrote:
I was playing in r8712u because I wanted to send a patch to conditionally silence a flooding
netdev_info(). But then I found out on
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/rtl819x that r8712u was to be replaced by r92su.From its git tree, it seems no commit were added since 4 months ago.
Could someone tell me in what shape is this new driver? Is there any plan to merge it (under staging I suppose) soon?
That's the story:
"Yes, r8712u has been in staging for a long time; however, it is not a matter of improving it. For a new wireless driver to be included in the main wireless directories, it must use mac80211."
<http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-wireless/msg105633.html>
r92su is "just a nice" rewrite of r8712u with a cfg80211 interface. However, this is due to the firmware interface shortcomings. For instance the r8712u firmware won't allow a driver initialize the PHY. It's true that there's a command to set the phy to a specified channel, however it's not possible to define the channel mode. (whenever it is supposed to be legacy, HT20, HT40+ or HT40-.)
The issue with r92su is: The driver is ready, but it's fundamentally incompatible with the rtlwifi framework and mac80211.
...
However,
José Vázquez discovered that Realtek has produced two linux drivers for these devices. The other driver (and more importantly: the firmware) can be the base for a rtl8192su+rtlwifi driver
(which could even support a proper AP mode!)
If you want to take a look:
<http://www.edimax.com/images/Image/OpenSourceCode/Wireless/Router/AR-7284WnA/AR-7284WnA&B_SDK_6222.tar.zip>
The driver is located in:
Edimax/src/kernel/linux-2.6.18.8/drivers/usb/net/8192su
The firmware + phy values:
Edimax/src/kernel/linux-2.6.18.8/usr/ramfs/usr/rtl8192su
So, it's back to the drawing board.
...
I hope this answers your question, if not... let me know ;).
Regards
Christian