wishlist: wpa_supplicant should pay attention to the currently forced SSID?

[Maciej Milewski]

On Monday 06 of June 2011 03:42:11 Adrian Chadd wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Something that keeps irking me is that wpa_supplicant will try
> scanning its config file in order and fail to associate to ssids that
> don't match the one which is hard-coded.
> 
> I hard-code SSIDs so I can force the network I'm associating to,
> without having to reconfigure wpa_supplicant.
> 
> Is this intended behaviour? Is there another easy way to tell
> wpa_supplicant what to associate to? Or could we modify wpa_supplicant
> to only try assocating to APs that match the currently configured
> SSID?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 
> Adrian
Hi Adrian,

The only thing which I found useful at current state is:

# priority: priority group (integer)
# By default, all networks will get same priority group (0). If some of the
# networks are more desirable, this field can be used to change the order in
# which wpa_supplicant goes through the networks when selecting a BSS. The
# priority groups will be iterated in decreasing priority (i.e., the larger 
the
# priority value, the sooner the network is matched against the scan results).
# Within each priority group, networks will be selected based on security
# policy, signal strength, etc.
# Please note that AP scanning with scan_ssid=1 is not using this priority to
# select the order for scanning. Instead, it uses the order the networks are 
in
# the configuration file.

It's not 100% what you need but may be enough in some cases.
Additional setting is:

# AP scanning/selection
# By default, wpa_supplicant requests driver to perform AP scanning and then
# uses the scan results to select a suitable AP. Another alternative is to
# allow the driver to take care of AP scanning and selection and use
# wpa_supplicant just to process EAPOL frames based on IEEE 802.11 association
# information from the driver.
# 1: wpa_supplicant initiates scanning and AP selection
# 0: driver takes care of scanning, AP selection, and IEEE 802.11 association
#    parameters (e.g., WPA IE generation); this mode can also be used with
#    non-WPA drivers when using IEEE 802.1X mode; do not try to associate with
#    APs (i.e., external program needs to control association). This mode must
#    also be used when using wired Ethernet drivers.
# 2: like 0, but associate with APs using security policy and SSID (but not
#    BSSID); this can be used, e.g., with ndiswrapper and NDIS driver to
#    enable operation with hidden SSIDs and optimized roaming; in this mode,
#    only the first network block in the configuration file is used and this
#    configuration should have explicit security policy (i.e., only one option
#    in the lists) for key_mgmt, pairwise, group, proto variables

I admit that I haven't been using this on FreeBSD but used this in tha past on 
Linux STA's.

Maciek