[PATCH v6] mac80211: Remove control.sta from struct ieee80211_tx_info and restructure tx-path

[Arik Nemtsov]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Arik Nemtsov <arik at wizery.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Arik Nemtsov <arik at wizery.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 7:31 PM, Thomas Huehn
>> <thomas at net.t-labs.tu-berlin.de> wrote:
>>> Hi Johannes,
>>>
>>> Johannes Berg schrieb:
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> /home/johannes/sys/wireless/drivers/net/wireless/ti/wlcore/tx.c: In
>>>>> function ‘wl1271_skb_queue_head’:
>>>>> /home/johannes/sys/wireless/drivers/net/wireless/ti/wlcore/tx.c:622:48:
>>>>> warning: ‘hlid’ may be used uninitialized in this function
>>>>> [-Wuninitialized]
>>>>
>>>> Those changes make no sense anyway -- you should be able to pass the
>>>> station pointer through if it previously used info->control.sta, instead
>>>> of doing an (expensive) lookup.
>>>
>>>
>>> This is the call path
>>>
>>> in main.c ... INIT_WORK(&wl->tx_work, wl1271_tx_work);
>>>  jumps to tx.c...wl1271_tx_work(struct work_struct *work)
>>>   calls wl1271_tx_work(struct work_struct *work)
>>>    calls wlcore_tx_work_locked(struct wl1271 *wl)
>>>     calls wl1271_skb_queue_head()
>>>      calls wl12xx_tx_get_hlid()
>>>       calls wl12xx_tx_get_hlid_ap() .... where sta is needed.
>>>
>>> But I could not find any point in the call path where I could grab the
>>> sta pointer and pass it through. I will move the rcu into
>>> wl12xx_tx_get_hlid_ap(), but I do not see any cheaper way here as using rcu.
>>
>> I agree with Johannes. The find_sta() in the Tx path is unacceptable.
>>
>> A relatively simple change here would be to put the sta pointer in the
>> portion of the struct reserved for rate control during op_tx(). wlcore
>> doesn't use software rate control anyway.
>> This would avoid from changing the code too much.
>
> Johannes correctly pointed out that the sta may no longer be valid
> when the skb is dequeued (which is a bug today as well). It's best to
> just store the hlid in the rate control portion.

Better to just wait some time. I wrote up something to make it much
easier for you. Waiting for some internal review before sending it up.

Arik