Subject: Re: ath seems still buggy
To: None <current-users@NetBSD.org>
From: David Young <dyoung@pobox.com>
List: current-users
Date: 10/20/2005 18:52:54
On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 02:35:55PM +0000, Marcin Jessa wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Oct 2005 10:10:40 -0400
> "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > David Young <dyoung@pobox.com> writes:
> > > The kernel features are there.  I plead ENOTIME a *long* time ago
> > > regarding the userland.  I tend to think hacking the userland is not
> > > tremendously difficult, albeit time-consuming.  I've been astonished
> > > how much people will whine instead of writing code.
> > 
> > Writing code requires familiarity with the particular interfaces in
> > question. We don't have a lot of documentation on the APIs you would
> > need to do this stuff, and most of us don't have the specialized
> > knowledge needed. Most of us don't know the inside of how the 802.11
> > stuff works so we aren't in a good position to do this off the bat.
> > 
> > If you were to take the lead and present a couple of specific projects
> > and offer to help people past the learning curve in accomplishing
> > them, I suspect you would get more success than simply assuming people
> > will intuit what is needed and step up to the plate.
> 
> I was about to write the same thing.
> But I wouldn't count on that happen. I just yesterday asked what part I
> can start to work on and got the silent treatment back. 

Marcin,

I am sorry you feel so maltreated, but has it really got anything to do
with me?

> I've frankly no idea what needs to be done, what's already done and
> where to start. 

The ifconfig options you mentioned the other day are all supported by the
kernel, however, they are not supported by ifconfig.  Add the options you
require to ifconfig, and then send a patch to tech-net.  You can find
implementations for the options you are missing in FreeBSD.  Beware,
FreeBSD's ifconfig is a lot different (read: less ugly) than NetBSD's.

You may find that FreeBSD has more complete documentation of the net80211
ioctls than NetBSD.  If you send a patch containing additional FreeBSD
manual pages, that would also be a tremendous help.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung@ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933