Re: [PATCH 2.6] Intersil Prism54 wireless driver

From: Jean Tourrilhes
Date: Wed Mar 10 2004 - 12:53:33 EST


On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 12:29:59PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> >On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 04:55:48PM +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> >>+MODULE_PARM(init_mode, "i");
> >>+MODULE_PARM_DESC(init_mode,
> >>+ "Set card mode:\n0: Auto\n1: Ad-Hoc\n2: Managed Client
> >>(Default)\n3: Master / Access Point\n4: Repeater (Not supported yet)\n5:
> >>Secondary (Not supported yet)\n6: Monitor");
> >>
> >> Please use module_param
> >
> >
> > I would even say that this is useless because the driver
> >support WE, and WE scripts set the mode before the card is up.
>
> module_param() is a type-safe interface roughly identical to
> MODULE_PARM(). Therefore, if MODULE_PARM() works, module_param() works
> also.

Yes, I know, I've been doing that for IrDA. What I meant was
that this specific module parameter could be remove entirely because
redundant.

> >>diff -Naur -X /home/mcgrof/lib/dontdiff
> >>linux-2.6.3/drivers/net/wireless/prism54/isl_wds.c
> >>linux-2.6.3-prism54/drivers/net/wireless/prism54/isl_wds.c
> >>--- linux-2.6.3/drivers/net/wireless/prism54/isl_wds.c Thu Jan 1
> >>00:00:00 1970
> >>+++ linux-2.6.3-prism54/drivers/net/wireless/prism54/isl_wds.c Thu
> >>Mar 4 02:00:01 2004
> >>
> >> WDS doesn't belong into a driver but in higher-level code.
> >
> >
> > The big 802.11 reorg can only happen when HostAP is in the
> >kernel.
>
> ISTR it needed some cleaning up before it could go in.

I think it would be nice to give some more explicit feedback
to Jouni.

> Further, in Linux, there is _never_ a requirement that "this driver be
> included before we can clean up." You can start the re-org any time you
> wish. Out-of-tree maintainers can follow the re-org, sometimes more easily.

You misunderstood. The HostAP driver has a pretty much
complete generic 802.11 stack. However, other driver can't depend on
that code until it's in the kernel.
By "big 802.11 reorg", I meant "make the other driver depend
on HostAP 802.11 code".
Of course, I'm quite partial to the HostAP code because I'm
more familiar with it and I believe it's the most advanced (host WEP,
802.1x, WPA, AP...). Other candidated are linux-wlan-ng or the *BSD
stack (by the way of the MadWifi driver).

> Jeff
>
>
>
> P.S. I still need to look at your netlink thing. Seems like a decent
> direction.

Thanks ;-) I would need to make sure that there is no popular
driver still using the old driver API (orinoco_cs is converted in the
CVS).

Jean
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