Re: [RFC] make wext wireless bits optional and deprecate them

From: Jean Tourrilhes
Date: Mon May 19 2008 - 13:04:09 EST


On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 02:16:08PM +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
>
> > Instead of testing for wireless/, best thing would probably be to call
> > SIOCGIWRANGE on the device and if it returns EOPNOTSUP then it's not
> > wireless. Some drivers may have to load firmware to figure out
> > supported rates and encryption capabilities, but to be honest, NM does
> > this to detect wireless devices and I haven't run into any issues in 4
> > years using it. If there are issues with drivers, then we need to fix
> > the driver too.
>
> I was about to propose calling SIOCGIWNAME since that is what
> wireless-tools do and that linux/wireless.h indicates.
>
> johannes

Yes, using SIOCGIWNAME is the right way to do it, it's the
only ioctl that is guarantee to always be present and require minimal
processing from the driver (it should be a static string). If you look
at iwconfig, this is how it does it.
(Sorry for the delay replying, I was chasing kids and
electrical faults this week end).

Have fun...

Jean

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