This is a first series of patches for making d80211 to be more intelligible for users. Changes are rather invasive - I tried to put them to smaller patches, although only a few of these patches are usable standalone.
All these changes are made with keeping backward userspace compatibility in mind. (This probably won't be 100 % achievable in case of AP and WDS mode, but it can be solved with a new driver for hostapd. There should be no incompatible changes to those modes yet.) The main goal is to reduce the number of devices (network interfaces) presented to userspace. This is not as easy as it seems to be. These patches don't reduce devices yet, but they are the first step. At least, user is not required to deal with more than one interface now. What these patches do? - You are no longer required to specify type of network interface you are adding. Just add a new device (by writing the name to the appropriate sysfs attribute) and set its mode by iwconfig. - Ad-hoc mode is not treated specially now - just add a new network interface (or reuse one of previously added) and set it to ad-hoc mode by iwconfig. - Network interfaces are fully independent now. You can add as many interfaces as you want, set their parameters (by iwconfig, etc.) and then UP them. If the combination of running interfaces you are trying to achieve is not allowed, you'll get an error. This way, you can e.g. configure several STA (managed) interfaces and, if the hardware supports it, put them all UP. Or, you can have an AP interface and a STA interface connected to another AP at the same time, etc. - Master device goes up/down automatically. - Promiscious mode for individual interfaces works now. This means you will receive all packets from your BSS. - Introduce "soft" vs. "hard" monitor mode. You can have a monitor interface together with a regular interface even if the hardware doesn't support it. You won't receive any frames except the ones destined to you, of course. This is called a "soft monitor". When the monitor interface is the only one running, it will automatically switch to a "hard monitor" mode and you will receive everything. Patches need to be applied on top of patches sent by Jouni Malinen few days ago. The whole series is also available as 'experimental' branch of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jbenc/dscape.git. -- Jiri Benc SUSE Labs - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
