HostAP: Signal quality updates & Manual Scan/Roaming

[Tony Espy]

I posted a problem re: HostAP and signal quality updates awhile back and 
didn't see any response.  My original post is appended below.

I've done some more testing and I believe the issue may be related to 
Manual Scan and Roaming mode ( mode '2' ), which is used by 
wpa_supplicant's HostAP driver.

After a fresh reboot, I issue the command:

 > prism2_param wlan0 host_roaming 2

I then issue the approprite iwconfig commands to associate with our AP.

At this point, when I cat '/proc/net/wireless', I get no signal quality 
updates.

If I set host_roaming to '1', signal updates start to work.  I'm able to 
toggle back and forth without breaking association and sure enough, mode 
'2' always seems to cause the signal quality updates to halt.

My next step is to try and modify the HostAP driver to always use 
RID_COMMSQUALITY (RID: FD43 ) instead of RID_DBCOMMSQUALITY (RID: FD51) 
and see if that makes any difference.

This is a bit of a showstopper for us as we really need to be able to 
report signal quality to the user.

Thanks,
Tony Espy
Pepper Computer

Original Post:
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I'm having trouble with the hostap-driver (v0.2.5) running in managed
mode where the signal quality values never seem to change when retrieved
via /proc/net/wireless interface, nor the SIOCGIWSTATS ioctl.

Sometimes they work ( ie. the values change over time ), but most of the
time, the values are static.  The other values reported by the iwconfig
& /proc/net/wireless seem to update OK ( eg. discarded packets, etc... ).

I'm running a 2.4.20 kernel w/the WE15 patch on an Xscale CPU.  I've
reproduced the problem with both a Gemtek CF card ( PRI=v1.1.0 /
STA=1.7.4) and a Linksys CF card ( PRI=v1.1.1 / STA=v1.8.0 ).

I added some printk's in the prism2_update_comms_qual() method to ensure
that the get_rid() call wasn't failing and that doesn't seem to be the
case.  I also tried disabling the comms_qual_update task, but this had
not effect either.

I have not yet tried v0.2.6 yet, but plan to do so tomorrow.

Any help, and/or hints for further debugging would be most appreciated!