RFC/PATCH: Allow wpa_supplicant to share scan results.
Ben Greear
greearb
Tue Nov 16 14:52:07 PST 2010
On 11/16/2010 02:36 PM, Jouni Malinen wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 11:57:09AM -0800, Ben Greear wrote:
>> I earlier attempted to put this sharing/propagation directly into
>> the kernel (instead of -EBUSY, the kernel would just keep a list of
>> interested interfaces and then send results to all interested parties).
>>
>> However, Johannes didn't like this approach, so I'm trying to do a
>> similar thing in user-space.
>
> Johannes is not the only one having something against the kernel
> approach.. ;-)
Well, this is all good for supplicant, but same problem exists for
un-encrypted interfaces that use the built-in kernel scanning. However,
I can carry my own patch if needed..it's still useful to get this
working with supplicant.
>> My understanding is that you cannot
>> read scan results from the kernel for one VIF if they were initiated on another
>> VIF. I might be wrong about that, however. At any rate, you certainly can't
>> have two VIFS on the same phy scanning at the same time, as you get -EBUSY instead.
>> That makes wpa_supplicant take a long time to scan& associate lots
>> of VIFS, and speeding that up is my primary goal at this point.
>
> Hmm.. Maybe I'm missing something in your patch, but it seems to be
> doing exactly what you are describing it should not be doing.. It seems
Ok, I think I mis-understood your original question. You can read shared results
from wpa_supplicant data structures..but not directly from the kernel.
> to share the scan-done event with all interfaces that are from the same
> radio and then each interface would try to read the scan result from
> their own VIF which would be different from the one that actually
> initiated the scan.. Similarly, I did not notice any changes that would
> actually restrict requesting new scans when there is a known scan
> request pending on another interface that shares the same radio.
>
> Are these still waiting to be implemented or did I miss something in
> your patch? Anyway, they approach in the newer version looked reasonable
> to me based on what I believe you are now trying to do.
I wasn't planning to add further restrictions. Currently, other vifs
making requests would get EBUSY, and that seems to be handled fine.
It's *possible* that someday multiple VIFs can scan simultaneously
in the kernel, so I don't think it's worth adding extra checks in supplicant.
>> One other thing I was worried about: My patch is going to send scan results
>> to interfaces that have not successfully requested them (they may have not
>> requested at all, or they may have tried and received EBUSY). Will that be
>> an issue?
>
> If your assumption above is correct, yes. Instead of sharing the
> scan-done event, this change should like share the scan_res from
> wpa_supplicant_get_scan_results() for all interfaces sharing the radio.
Something is needed to kick the other VIFs and tell them there are
scan results available. That is why I put the logic in events.c
as I did.
Thanks,
Ben
--
Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>
Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com
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