dhcpcd-discuss

On 24/05/2018 10:37, Serge Schneider wrote:
> Yes , we have the hook enabled. Is that not the recommended way to start 
> wpa_supplicant when using dhcpcd?

It's just not the default way.
dhcpcd should NOT make the assumption that just because the interface is 
wireless AND wpa_supplicant exists AND wpa_supplicant.conf is configured 
that IT is responsible for starting and stopping it.

A good recent example is the recent introduction of IWD which competes 
with wpa_supplicant. If both are installed and configured, we don't want 
dhcpcd starting wpa_supplicant when it knows nothing about IWD - the 
user needs to make the conscious choice here.

> IIRC, the original reason for adding this patch was that some wifi 
> devices don't match "if_getssid(ifp) != -1", so " *ifp->name == 'w'" was 
> added as a quick workaround.

If the operation of getting the SSID returns -1 that means that there 
was an error. Even if not associated and not instructed to associate, 
the call will succeed. Every wireless card must support getting and 
setting SSID as a minium and only wireless cards do this.

Thus it follows that any fix should be at the kernel level and not in 
dhcpcd. Unless of course it's a dhcpcd bug, but I don't recall any 
reported issues here in years.

On BSD at least, most wireless devices don't start with the letter w and 
on Linux you can rename them anyway.

Roy