wpa_cli ping-pong and power management

[Alon Bar-Lev]

Hello,

At least Gentoo network init script [1] uses wpa_cli with a script [2]
to simulate ifplugd events for wpa_supplicant enabled interfaces.
Can it be done better using scripts with current wpa_supplicant
offering? (Without forking new processes every time and without waking
up the process).

Thanks!
Alon.

[1] http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/openrc.git;a=blob;f=net/wpa_supplicant.sh;h=543f251ab8c18a0d316c6a4296a699e81014bb9c;hb=HEAD#l129
[2] http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo-x86/net-wireless/wpa_supplicant/files/wpa_cli.sh?rev=1.1&view=markup

On 10/31/08, Jouni Malinen <j at w1.fi> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 11:43:37AM +0200, Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
>
>  > wpa_cli use alarm(1) in order to ping/pong the daemon.
>  > This wakes up both processes once a seconds which consumes power.
>  > Can you please find a different way for keep alive? Why not wait for fd close?
>
>
> This is used in the interactive mode as a simple mechanism to fetch any
>  pending message and to notice if the connection to wpa_supplicant has
>  died. It is not strictly speaking required and for example, Windows
>  build of wpa_cli does not use it. The drawback there is that user will
>  need to press enter to get wpa_cli to fetch any potentially received
>  messages.
>
>  wpa_cli is supposed to be a simple example program and command line tool
>  that can be used to interact with wpa_supplicant. In what kind of usage
>  case do you see this type of polling as an issue? I'm somewhat surprised
>  if one were to run wpa_cli in interactive mode all the time..
>
>
>  --
>  Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA
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