wpa_supplicant/ibss

[Jouni Malinen]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 08:57:09PM +0100, Antonio Quartulli wrote:
> while playing with wpa_supplicant using several configurations I found out that
> if the param 'freq' is not specified within the network block, the creation of a
> new IBSS network will fail.

Well, that depends on which driver wrapper you are using, but yes, that
does indeed seem to be the case with nl80211.

> Actually the kernel waits for a freq param as it cannot decide on its behalf. At
> the same time wpa_s is not providing any "default choice" leading to a EINVAL
> result when trying to create the ibss network.
> 
> What should wpa_s do? Really provide a default choice? or simply print a more
> detailed message to the user in order to let him notice the missing parameter?

I don't have a clear preference on this. Taken into account the
direction we are moving towards with hostapd and AP mode, I'd say it
would be reasonable to assume the channel selection to be coming from
user space. As such, wpa_supplicant should either figure out a good
channel (e.g., start with scan results and pick the least used channel
of 1, 6, 11) or force user to do this with drivers that require
explicitly set channel.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA