d80211: ANNOUNCE: DadWifi, a port of MadWifi to d80211
Subsystems (2)
Quoted 7 lines · David Kimdon
Hi,
DadWifi is a port of MadWifi to the d80211 stack. It works now in managed and monitor mode, lightly tested. Any card supported by MadWifi should be supported by DadWifi [1]. This allows a large number of cards to now take advantage of the d80211 stack.
Quoted 5 lines
DadWifi uses the same (binary only) hal as MadWifi and reuses much of the initialization, descriptor and interrupt processing code.
There is a subversion repository and mailing list available [2] for those wishing to try it out or help with development.
Any chance you would consider joining effort with the current MadWifi team and infrastructure (existing mailing lists, developers, subversion archive, bug tracking etc etc) at madwifi.org, or is this a strictly in-house or separate undertaking?
Thanks, Kel.
Quoted 10 lines · On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 17:14:29 -0700 David Kimdon <[email protected]>…
Hi,
DadWifi is a port of MadWifi to the d80211 stack. It works now in managed and monitor mode, lightly tested. Any card supported by MadWifi should be supported by DadWifi [1]. This allows a large number of cards to now take advantage of the d80211 stack.
DadWifi uses the same (binary only) hal as MadWifi and reuses much of the initialization, descriptor and interrupt processing code.
Quoted 8 lines
There is a subversion repository and mailing list available [2] for those wishing to try it out or help with development.
-David
[1] : http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility
[2] : https://devicescape.org/projects/dadwifi/
I would consider this a BAD thing. You are creating a derived work out of GPL and non-GPL software. This actually will hurt the possible acceptance of the d80211 stack into the mainline kernel.
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Hello!
Quoted 3 lines · Stephen Hemminger
I would consider this a BAD thing. You are creating a derived work out of GPL and non-GPL software. This actually will hurt the possible acceptance of the d80211 stack into the mainline kernel.
On the contrary, I think this effort with spur interest in d80211, Atheros hardware and stimulate development of OpenHAL. It will also put additional pressure on Atheros to open HAL sources.
The technical ability of d80211 to handle a popular chipset would hardly undermine its chances to be included into the kernel. It takes more that one step to achieve free in-kernel support for Atheros chipsets. DadWifi may be one of those steps, OpenHAL or open-sourcing the Atheros HAL would be the other.
If DadWifi succeeds at supplanting MadWifi, it will reduce the proliferation of incompatible 802.11 stacks for Linux. The FreeBSD stack included in MadWifi will become obsolete.
There are many great ideas involving meshing networks that require support at the 802.11 MAC layer because they are tied to the WDS implementation. Those efforts can be shared if the MAC layer is shared. A company doing mesh networking on Atheros today could switch to Broadcom tomorrow if Broadcom makes better chips, or vice versa. Users of DadWifi would contribute fixes that would affect users of other chipsets.
Should d80211 be merged with the existing 802.11 stack in the kernel, users of DadWifi would be among the testers, and they will ensure that useful features of d80211 are not lost.
Unless I'm missing something obvious, I don't see absolutely anything that could harm the chances of d80211 to make it to the mainline kernel.
Signature · 8 lines
Regards, Pavel Roskin ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642
Quoted 10 lines · On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:26:00 -0400 Pavel Roskin <[email protected]> wrote:
Hello!
Quoted 3 lines · Stephen Hemminger
I would consider this a BAD thing. You are creating a derived work out of GPL and non-GPL software. This actually will hurt the possible acceptance of the d80211 stack into the mainline kernel.
On the contrary, I think this effort with spur interest in d80211, Atheros hardware and stimulate development of OpenHAL. It will also put additional pressure on Atheros to open HAL sources.
HAL's are bad as well. You want a real driver, not one that has multiple layers of indirection.
Quoted 5 lines
The technical ability of d80211 to handle a popular chipset would hardly undermine its chances to be included into the kernel. It takes more that one step to achieve free in-kernel support for Atheros chipsets. DadWifi may be one of those steps, OpenHAL or open-sourcing the Atheros HAL would be the other.
If Atheros does open source their existing driver. Someone will need to do a new driver that gets rid of the HAL layer.
Quoted 12 lines
If DadWifi succeeds at supplanting MadWifi, it will reduce the proliferation of incompatible 802.11 stacks for Linux. The FreeBSD stack included in MadWifi will become obsolete.
There are many great ideas involving meshing networks that require support at the 802.11 MAC layer because they are tied to the WDS implementation. Those efforts can be shared if the MAC layer is shared. A company doing mesh networking on Atheros today could switch to Broadcom tomorrow if Broadcom makes better chips, or vice versa. Users of DadWifi would contribute fixes that would affect users of other chipsets.
Quoted 3 lines
Should d80211 be merged with the existing 802.11 stack in the kernel, users of DadWifi would be among the testers, and they will ensure that useful features of d80211 are not lost.
As a test or transition vehicle it is a DadWifi is good, but hopefully it won't slow the progress to a real open source solution
Quoted 3 lines
Unless I'm missing something obvious, I don't see absolutely anything that could harm the chances of d80211 to make it to the mainline kernel.
Christoph et. all will insist that everything be EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL.
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Quoted 11 lines · Stephen Hemminger
Quoted 8 lines · Stephen Hemminger
Quoted 3 lines
I would consider this a BAD thing. You are creating a derived work out of GPL and non-GPL software. This actually will hurt the possible acceptance of the d80211 stack into the mainline kernel.
On the contrary, I think this effort with spur interest in d80211, Atheros hardware and stimulate development of OpenHAL. It will also put additional pressure on Atheros to open HAL sources.
HAL's are bad as well. You want a real driver, not one that has multiple layers of indirection.
I think "dissolving" HAL once its open is much easier than porting the driver from one 802.11 stack to another. The former is just a matter of moving functions around, making some of them inline, renaming constants, fixing some ugly code. It's a set of simple operations, each of which keeps the driver functional. If anything breaks, it's easy to track back to the minor change that broke it.
Porting to another 802.11 stack is a quantum leap that can only be done in one step and that could break lots of things at once. It could also reveal limitations of the new stack that need to be fixed. It's so commendable that somebody is trying to do the hardest part.
Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 5 lines
The technical ability of d80211 to handle a popular chipset would hardly undermine its chances to be included into the kernel. It takes more that one step to achieve free in-kernel support for Atheros chipsets. DadWifi may be one of those steps, OpenHAL or open-sourcing the Atheros HAL would be the other.
If Atheros does open source their existing driver. Someone will need to do a new driver that gets rid of the HAL layer.
Yes, but this can be evolutionary. Some code from HAL could actually migrate into the kernel or to a userspace utility. We still want country-specific limitations, at least by default, so that users don't break local regulations unknowingly.
And even if the complete rewrite is needed, d80211 will be prepared to deal with Atheros cards, because the responsibilities of the firmware and the host software won't change.
Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 3 lines
Should d80211 be merged with the existing 802.11 stack in the kernel, users of DadWifi would be among the testers, and they will ensure that useful features of d80211 are not lost.
As a test or transition vehicle it is a DadWifi is good, but hopefully it won't slow the progress to a real open source solution
I think it may speed things up. Once the kernel integration is in sight, OpenHAL developers would have a stronger motivation to produce a working and copyright-clean product.
Quoted 5 lines
Quoted 3 lines
Unless I'm missing something obvious, I don't see absolutely anything that could harm the chances of d80211 to make it to the mainline kernel.
Christoph et. all will insist that everything be
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL.
That shouldn't be an issue at all. HAL does not and can not call any Linux functions directly. It can only communicate to the kernel through a wrapper that will be under GPL. Note that it's not circumvention of EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. It's a direct consequence of the fact that HAL is indeed not derived from Linux.
Signature · 2 lines
Regards, Pavel Roskin
Quoted 9 lines · David Kimdon
Hi,
DadWifi is a port of MadWifi to the d80211 stack. It works now in managed and monitor mode, lightly tested. Any card supported by MadWifi should be supported by DadWifi [1]. This allows a large number of cards to now take advantage of the d80211 stack.
DadWifi uses the same (binary only) hal as MadWifi and reuses much of the initialization, descriptor and interrupt processing code.
Guys, why do you waste your time on doing stuff that's useless for most of us, and that people can't even legally redistribute.
Please switch to openhal or the openbsd code and we all owe you a lot of beer at the next conference :)
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Quoted 2 lines · Christoph Hellwig
Guys, why do you waste your time on doing stuff that's useless for most of us, and that people can't even legally redistribute.
I dislike HAL too. But I don't think this effort is useless. It's a great base for a future fully open Atheros driver - it's going to use the d80211 stack anyway, so it can reuse most of the code of this driver. It also allow us to make sure d80211 is capable of supporting Atheros chipsets. I appreciate the effort.
AP mode support would be even greater thing - David, do you plan to add it?
Quoted 2 lines
Please switch to openhal or the openbsd code and we all owe you a lot of beer at the next conference :)
And what 802.11 stack would you use with it?
Thanks,
Jiri
Signature · 2 lines
Jiri Benc SUSE Labs
Quoted 2 lines · Christoph Hellwig
Guys, why do you waste your time on doing stuff that's useless for most of us, and that people can't even legally redistribute.
Well that may be your opinion, but it's certainly not mine. We had just discussed starting an in-house project to port the HAL to the d80211 stack when David made his announcement.
The reason? While we'd obviously prefer that the HAL didn't exist, if it's going to exist we would far rather that it had a common 80211 stack on top of it, so that we can easily switch to other chipsets and retain the same featureset.
Reducing the number of 80211 stacks in use in Linux is a great thing.
Quoted 2 lines
Please switch to openhal or the openbsd code and we all owe you a lot of beer at the next conference :)
I'll be very happy to provide beer for any devicescape employee I meet, simply based on the initial release of dadwifi.
Cheers
--
Matt Brown
[email protected]
Mob +64 21 611 544 www.mattb.net.nz
Quoted 11 lines · Matt Brown
Quoted 3 lines · Christoph Hellwig
Guys, why do you waste your time on doing stuff that's useless for most
of us, and that people can't even legally redistribute.Well that may be your opinion, but it's certainly not mine. We had just
discussed starting an in-house project to port the HAL to the d80211 stack when David made his announcement.
Quoted 8 lines
The reason? While we'd obviously prefer that the HAL didn't exist, if it's going to exist we would far rather that it had a common 80211 stack
on top of it, so that we can easily switch to other chipsets and retain
the same featureset.Reducing the number of 80211 stacks in use in Linux is a great thing.
Of course, the net80211 stack in FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD is the only stack (as of 6.x, anyway),
and it supports ... multiple chipsets.
d80211 bought you nothing here.
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Quoted 1 line · Jim Thompson
d80211 bought you nothing here.
Assuming we were able to move our development and production environments to a BSD this might be true.
But for a plethora of reasons we use Linux and the costs of shifting to
*BSD are far too high.
Given this scenario, for *us* standardising on d80211 via dadwifi appears to be a very positive development.
--
Matt Brown
[email protected]
Mob +64 21 611 544 www.mattb.net.nz
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