On Thu, Mar 09, 2006 at 11:56:19PM +0000, Jaime wrote:
> As the title says, running wpa_supplicant in background and wait mode
> against a "down" interface "ups" it. Here's some evidence:
>
> Result of running "ifconfig -s":
> Iface MTU Met RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
> eth0 1500 0 563 0 0 0 629 0 0 0 BMRU
> lo 16436 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 LRU
>
> Then run "/usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -B -w -i wlan0 -D wext -c
> /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf"
>
> Then run "ifconfig -s" again:
> Iface MTU Met RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
> eth0 1500 0 569 0 0 0 629 0 0 0 BMRU
> lo 16436 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 LRU
> wlan0 1500 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 BMRU
I suspect that this is because you have choosen the option ap_scan=1 in
/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. This is btw the default.
In ap_scan=1, wpa_supplicant initiates scanning an AP selection. Many
(well, at least madwifi) require the interface to be 'up' in order to
activate the radio device.
Please try the other modes for ap_scan (see wpa_supplicant
documentation), and report back.
> There are at least two reasons why I think this behaviour is bad:
> a) I want to run wpa_supplicant in the background at start-up so that
> it looks after my wireless connection whenever if gets "upped". I'm
> also using ifupdown, so the only thing which should "up" and "down"
> interfaces is "ifup" and "ifdown" (so that the true interface state
> always agrees with the contents of /etc/network/run/ifstate). If
> wpa_supplicant "ups" the wireless interface, then after boot-up the
> interface is up, but /etc/network/run/ifstate says it isn't.
> This is bad :(
You are completley right. ifupdown do not support the roaming case at
all, and is inherently not very usable for this usecase. I recommend not
configuring your interface using ifupdown at all and use a roaming
manager like NetworkManager.
wpasupplicant cannot fix design issues in ifupdown.
> b) /etc/init.d/wpasupplicant states the following (lines 6 and 7):
> # However, the wpa_supplicant daemon will start, and sit waiting
> # for the name interface to come up....
> Well, it doesn't sit waiting for the named interface to come up.
> It "ups" it, itself. Once again, this is bad :(
I think this is quite device and configuration dependent.
> Once again, apologies if this bug-report is "wrong", but hey, it's my
> first bug report!
You are right with your report that this is indeed a problem. The thing
is, that I don't think that this issue can be solved within
wpasupplicant. If you agree with me, please close this report. If you
don't, please help us to solve this.
Gruesse,
Reinhard
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