wireless network detection/processing in net/gkrellm-wireless help needed

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

I'm sending this to tech-net and tech-pkg, as it concerns a package in pkgsrc
(net/gkrellm-wireless) but needs assistance from someone who understands
NetBSD's wireless (802.11) infrastructure.   Replies to tech-pkg only
please (Reply-To is set, but I know many mailers mostly ignore that).

Basically, gkrellm-wireless identifies 802.11 interfaces, and provides
an easy (for gkrellm users anyway) interface to the basic stats (particularly
signal strength, etc).

The way it identifies wireless interfaces on NetBSD is "quaint" - it just
looks at the interface name, and if it is wi%d then it is a wireless
interface, otehrwise it is not ...   (the last time I tried, my wi (wavelan)
interface cards had all stopped working in NetBSD, pcmcia support seems to
have bit rotted, so this way of determining what is wireless is rather
sub-optimal).   Nor would adding a list of every other interface name that
we believe to be a wireless interface (ath iwn wpi rum ...) a rational
approach.

I assume there is some nice interface ioctl that wireless interfaces
support, and others don't, that could be used to apply to any random
interface name (getting the list of interfaces is not an issue) and
which would only work for 802.11 interfaces (even if it works for just
most 802.11 it would be considerably better than what we currently have.)

Once identified, the code needs to extract the relevant stats - I suspect
the way this is done is sub-optimal as well, but as I currently never
get that far, I'm not sure whether it would work, or not.

If anyone has time to look at this, that would be great, if not, a
suggestion what approach to take would be appreciated, and I'll see
if I can make it work.

Thanks,

kre