Bug 481380

Summary:	Feature request: Enable driver extension "ralink" in wpa_supplicant
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 11.2	Reporter:	Axel Köllhofer <AxelKoellhofer>
Component:	Network	Assignee:	Helmut Schaa <hschaa>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Enhancement
Priority:	P3 - Medium
Version:	Factory
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	SUSE Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Axel Köllhofer 2009-03-03 10:07:07 UTC

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.5; Linux) KHTML/3.5.10 (like Gecko) SUSE

Since version 0.6.0 wpa_supplicant offers the use of the driver extension "ralink" which can be used with the Ralink "legacy" drivers rt61 and rt73 respectively.

Although most of the new rt2x00-drivers - which are using "wext"-extension with wpa_supplicant- are rather reliable since kernel 2.6.27/openSUSE 11.1, especially rt61pci seems to be problematic in some cases.

Enabling the driver extension "ralink" by simply adding

CONFIG_DRIVER_RALINK=y

in .config-File for wpa_supplicant would give users a fallback if rt61pci or rt73usb fails.

Of course, this possibility should be completely optional and the default should be "use drivers rt61pci and rt73usb with wpa-extension wext" but as implementing this fallback would be rather easy, I think it makes sense to offer this possibility to the users.

Packages with those legacy-drivers (i.e. from http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Downloads - "Enhanced legacy drivers") could be provided within one of the inofficial OBS-repositories, for example this one

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/driver:/wireless/

which also contains madwifi-free as a "non officially supported but mature and known to work very well" alternative to officially supported drivers (ath5k/ath9k in this case).

I could provide spec-files for rt61 and rt73 if there is interest in offering them via OBS.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1 Helmut Schaa 2009-03-03 10:16:28 UTC

Ok, I'll do that together with the next wpa_supplicant update.

(In reply to comment #0)
> I could provide spec-files for rt61 and rt73 if there is interest in offering
> them via OBS.

That'll be great. Do you want to maintain these in the driver:wireless repo?

Comment 2 Axel Köllhofer 2009-03-03 11:44:26 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> 
> That'll be great. Do you want to maintain these in the driver:wireless repo?

Well, why not, but to be honest, I have to get familiar with OBS first, I am building and maintaining quite a few RPM-Packages (mainly drivers for WLAN-cards, however I never got around to build them in OBS, perhaps this is a good reason to start with that).

Comment 3 Helmut Schaa 2009-03-03 11:58:42 UTC

(In reply to comment #2)
> mainly drivers for WLAN-cards, however I never got around to build them
> in OBS, perhaps this is a good reason to start with that

Yeah. Just mail me directly if you need assistance.

Comment 4 Axel Köllhofer 2009-03-03 12:17:31 UTC

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > mainly drivers for WLAN-cards, however I never got around to build them
> > in OBS, perhaps this is a good reason to start with that
> 
> Yeah. Just mail me directly if you need assistance.

Thanks for your offer, until now, I had no problems. looks pretty straight forward and the first results are also already available.

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Akoellh/

The SPECs are still very basic, I will try to clean and polish them, but first priority is "stuff has to build".

If I experience problems I cannot solve by "RTFM", I will consider your offer.

Comment 5 Helmut Schaa 2009-05-05 10:00:45 UTC

Updated wpa_supplicant in home:hschaa:Factory to 0.6.9. I'll commit it to
Factory as soon as the build succeeded.

Comment 6 Helmut Schaa 2009-05-07 11:50:11 UTC

Done, wpa_supplicant 0.6.9 should pop up soon in Factory.