Update to net/gnome-netstatus to support new wlan system in -CURRENT

[Sam Leffler]

Coleman Kane wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-04-23 at 10:35 -0700, Sam Leffler wrote:
>   
>> Coleman Kane wrote:
>>     
>>> On Wed, 2008-04-23 at 13:18 -0400, Coleman Kane wrote:
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I put together some changes to the net/gnome-netstatus applet to allow
>>>> it to detect and work with the new wlan interface system that was just
>>>> introduced in CURRENT.
>>>>
>>>> This new code doesn't identify non-wlanN interfaces as wifi anymore.
>>>>
>>>> I think it may need some help in getting signal-strength detection
>>>> properly using the if_ndis driver. Mine keeps telling me that the signal
>>>> strength is always 100% no matter where I walk in my apt.
>>>>
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> Yes, I do mean to actually attach the patch too.
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> As I told you previously keying off the ifnet name is a mistake.  What 
>> you can do is check the media status and for any 802.3 interface look 
>> for a backpointer in the MIB to a parent device that must be marked as 
>> an 802.11 device.  Right now this can be defeated if ifnet is renamed 
>> such that you cannot identify the wlanX unity # to find the MIB entry 
>> under net.wlan.X.%parent.
>>
>> Separately you appear to have added "an", "rum", and "ray".  I'm not 
>> sure what this code does but again using ifnet names is a mistake.  In 
>> 7.x you can do a similar search of the net.wlan.X MIB space using the 
>> %parent backpointer to identify an 802.11 device.  wlandebug.c has crude 
>> code you can crib (for 7.x).
>>
>> I don't recall if 6.x has the backpointer in the MIB namespace to use.
>>
>>     Sam
>>
>>     
>
> The original code was written this way, so I was just mimicking it. Your
> idea sounds a lot more stable. The addition of the "rum" and "ray"
> interfaces is done by the original patch, as the upstream GNOME code
> hadn't been written to expect either of those yet. The "an" device isn't
> added, it's part of the surrounding text of the patch. You're looking at
> a patch-of-a-patch...
>
> Anyhow, I'm not the original author but these changes probably make it
> better now than it was before (and my netstatus applet works now). I'll
> see if I can find some time to re-implement this properly over the
> weekend. We might be able to get more iface info in there as well.
>
>   
Ok, thanks.  FWIW there is a large body of 802.11-related code that 
should be lifted form various parts of the src tree into a lib80211 or 
similar.  For example there is now an XML database of regulatory domain 
information that ifconfig uses.  UI apps could easily want to use this 
info along w/ many other bits that are mostly used by ifconfig at the 
moment.

I am happy to work w/ anyone that's interested in this.

    Sam