Re: [PATCH 3/4] devices/wifi: Add the wifi-backend config option

[Andrew Zaborowski <andrew zaborowski intel com>]

Hi,

On 7 December 2017 at 08:22, Thomas Haller <thaller redhat com> wrote:
> Maybe the documentation should not say:
> <literal>wpa_supplicant</literal> is also the default backend.
> but instead: "if the setting is missing, it is autodetected.".
>
> -- although for now, it means to always ~detect~ supplicant.
>
>
>
>
> Would it ever make sense that one device is managed by supplicant and
> another by iwd? I think it would.

I'm not sure, multiple real wifi devices in one system is generally a
rare situation and it's hard to tell what is expected from the
software.

> Maybe this should hence be configured
> via
>
> [device]
> wifi.backend=<wpa_supplicant|iwd>
>
> the [device] section allows to configure settings per-device, like
>
> /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/10-wifi-backend.conf:
>
>   [device-wifi-backend-wlan0]
>   match-device=interface-name:wlan0
>   wifi.backend=iwd
>
>   [device-wifi-backend-default]
>   wifi.backend=wpa_supplicant
>
> We currently lookup such configuration via
> nm_config_data_get_device_config(). But inside the device-factory you
> don't have a NMDevice instance at hand, to make that decision. We would
> need a new "nm_config_data_get_device_config_by_ifindex()", to get the
> matching parameters from NMPlatform.
>
> We can do this later -- but before 1.12.0 release.

Ok, let's do this in separate patches.  I left the wifi-backend option
in my patches but dropped the documentation piece because it's going
to be temporary.

Best regards