Bug 2520

Summary:	wl-kmod is compiled with older Wireless Extensions (Wext) API while newer cfg80211 API is available
Product:	Fedora	Reporter:	Erwan Le Pennec <lepennec>
Component:	wl-kmod	Assignee:	NVieville <nicolas.vieville>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	enhancement	CC:	jarod
Priority:	P5
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	GNU/Linux
namespace:

Description Erwan Le Pennec 2012-10-09 09:26:09 CEST

Hi,

I have noticed that wl-kmod is compiled with the older Wireless Extensions (Wext) API and not with the newer cfg80211 API. It turns out that the detection of this API is broken in the Makefile from broadcom. An easy way to compile the driver with this API is to add API=CFG80211 as a make option line 68 of wl-kmod.spec. Note that the driver compiled with Wext works fine but so is the one compiled with cfg80211 (at least on my computer...). Finally, I should say that don't know the exact difference between those two APIs so this is not an important issue at all...

Yours,

   Erwan

Comment 1 Erwan Le Pennec 2012-10-10 09:37:23 CEST

Here is a page with a patched version for Ubuntu and a link to an explaination why it matters: https://github.com/poliva/broadcom-sta

  Erwan

Comment 2 NVieville 2012-10-10 15:53:01 CEST

Hello,

Thanks for reminding me this, and for the link.

According to https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=10bab00afed042c1a38ed5ffb135e2aea5ce1277 the old API (Wext) should be removed from kernel sources "as soon as possible" when Linux distributions come with new wireless tools (NetworkManager, wpa_supplicant 1.0, etc. ).

So why not trying to introduce this from F-17. But, I'm not sure it should be back-ported to F-16 as there still old version of these wireless tools in it. 

Information about these wireless tools would be welcome.

I'll submit a patch to wl-kmod Makefile to deals correctly with kernel versions, in order to build correctly wl module.

Cordially,


-- 
NVieville

Comment 3 NVieville 2012-10-10 20:05:15 CEST

Done!

New kmod-wl and akmod-wl packages with CFG80211 API activated will be available soon, once signed by rpmfusion builder.

I close this bug, since the request is fixed.

Fell free to re-open it or a new one if in using this wireless module a problem occurs.

Cordially,


-- 
NVieville

Comment 4 Erwan Le Pennec 2012-10-11 10:06:15 CEST

Merci!