Troubles with beacon_settings

[Emmanuel Grumbach]

I am trying to develop a driver for a WLAN NIC using D80211, and to have it
working as an AP with Hostapd on top of D80211. Logically, I need a new
beacon every DTIM period since the TIM Information Element gets changed
every DTIM period. In my hostapd.conf:

beacon_int = 100
dtim_period = 2

I thought that hostapd should send an ioctl to set the beacon, this ioctl
would be translated to ieee80211_config_interface by D80211 with the beacon
set by hostapd. At least, according to my understanding of
driver_devicescape.c, this is what should happen. My problem is that this
ioctl comes very late in the init process. Here is a short description of
the init flow of D80211 (when hostapd sends its instructions), this is a
list of handlers that I implement, and that D80211 calls:

   1. add_interface
   2. open (here I should be already able to send beacons according to
   d80211.h)
   3. config_interface (several times with beacon NULL)

And much later, config_interface is called again with a non-null beacon.

All this when I register as a driver that needs a beacon template. When I
register as a driver that needs a full beacon frame, I should be able to
call ieee80211_beacon_get to get a beacon, but this does not work (beacon is
NULL).

Questions:
1) Am I right with I thought ?
2) Why does Hostapd begins to open and start my device before being able to
give me a valid beacon ?
3) Is this a problem in Hostapd or D80211 or neither ?

thanks

-- 
Emmanuel Grumbach
egrumbach at gmail.com
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