Re: [cfg80211 / iwlwifi] setting wireless regulatory domain doesn'twork.

From: Luis R. Rodriguez
Date: Wed Dec 18 2013 - 14:43:43 EST


On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 11:48:45AM +0100, Sander Eikelenboom wrote:
>
> Wednesday, December 18, 2013, 10:26:25 AM, you wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
>
> > We really should be asking Luis to look at this who hasn't yet chimed
> > in, presumably because he's between jobs (and travelling IIRC)
>
> > On Wed, 2013-12-18 at 10:16 +0100, Arend van Spriel wrote:
> >> On 12/17/2013 11:06 PM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >> > We have literally had this *exact* same issue with firmware loading.
> >> > Network drivers shouldn't try to load firmware at module load time.
> >> > Same deal.
> >>
> >> It is kind of a chicken and egg problem for (wireless) networking
> >> drivers. To get IFF_UP from the network layer you have to register a
> >> netdevice. For wireless drivers this means you have to register a wiphy
> >> device with cfg80211 which flags capabilities and optionally are custom
> >> regulatory domain. That information depends on the device and firmware
> >> used. And there we have a full circle.
>
> > This is all really beside the point.
>
> > For this CRDA information, the kernel never actually *waits* for it, so
> > in the case that there's no reply, it uses the built-in world domain. So
> > it's not like request_firmware(), which will block boot forever, but
> > it's also not like request_firmware_nowait() which will eventually time
> > out and come back with an error if userspace isn't handling it (though
> > now that firmware loading is built in ...)
>
> > The issue is that it uses the built-in data *forever*, and what Sander
> > said was "or it will block forever" but just meant that it never was
> > able to do any further updates.
>
> > It *doesn't* actually block the boot process or such. Everything Linus
> > said is true but seems to have been written in understanding "blocks" as
> > "blocking the boot process", rather than "blocking further updates".
>
> > Regardless of this, even blocking further updates is a really bad idea.
> > There are a few ways to handle this, but I'll let Luis poke at that.
>
> Your description is correct, sorry if I was not clear.

We have a timeout handler for this, I'll check to see what's going on
by trying to reproduce on my end. Are you using wireless-testing ?

Luis
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