Re: wpa_supplicant before dhcpcd

[Jouni Malinen <j%w1.fi@localhost>]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 08:43:11PM +0200, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 01:44:44PM -0400, matthew sporleder wrote:
> > I like the idea of saying wpa in the same line as dhcp if we're going
> > that direction for per-interface configs.  However, I would prefer it
> > if simply added any "wpa" flagged interfaces to the -i argument of
> > wpa_supplicant.
> 
> The problem here is that not all interfaces might be present at boot
> time. wpa_supplicant currently has no way to say "add the following
> interface". If it did, we could just make wpa_supplicant a requirement
> of the main network rc.d script and add interfaces as we go.

But it does.. Or well, assuming you are using something relatively
recent, it does. You can dynamically add and remove interfaces from
wpa_supplicant (see "Dynamic interface add and operation without
configuration files" in README).

> Similiarly after an interface went away, it would just inform
> wpa_supplicant that it should no longer care about it.

wpa_supplicant has infrastructure for handling some of these cases
internally (e.g., unplug and re-insert a USB WLAN dongle and
wpa_supplicant can re-initialize configuration automatically when the
interface comes back). I haven't tested this on NetBSD or FreeBSD, but
at least the driver wrapper code in wpa_supplicant tree has handler for
RTN_IFANNOUNCE and the internal wpa_supplicant EVENT_INTERFACE_STATUS
calls which are needed for this. Anyway, if the adding/removing of an
network interface is handled externally, the dynamic add/remove
interface from wpa_supplicant will take care of this type of
re-configuration without wpa_supplicant having to figure out what
happened internally.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA