[pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#650834: wpasupplicant: wpa_supplicant is built without bgscan feature

[Andre Beck]

Package: wpasupplicant
Version: 0.7.3-5
Severity: minor

Dear Maintainer,

I've noticed that wpa_supplicant has grown some proper means of roaming in
well-designed 802.11 ESS environments that were previously missing. This
apparently started with the 0.7 train and has been enhanced since, it
seems it will even go further. When trying out these features on my
box running current testing with roaming mode, I found they would not
work. I've added lines like

	bgscan="simple:15:-64:120"

to certain network blocks in the config, but background scanning and
subsequent handovers were not evident from the debug log. So I've had
a look at the sources and found CONFIG_BGSCAN_SIMPLE is missing from
debian/config/linux, explaining the absence of the feature from the
package. I've tested adding CONFIG_BGSCAN_SIMPLE=y to the file, rebuilt
and installed the package and had the feature working as expected
(or rather learned what to expect after that, as the feature is very
underdocumented and missing one has to add it to the build options
is easy).

So this is more of a wishlist item, but I picked minor as it is a piece
of functionality we are missing out on currently (feel free to lower the
priority though). In addition, the maintainers of NetworkManager will
probably trip over the same issue sooner or later (I wonder why they
haven't yet, given NM 0.9 makes some fuzz about now using this stuff).

AFAIK the feature doesn't change default operations unless it is
actively triggered into use by a config statement in wpa_supplicant.conf
or through the IPC control interface, so adding it should be safe.

So please, add

CONFIG_BGSCAN_SIMPLE=y

to the relevant configuration file(s), and watch out for things to come
on that rail in future versions, I expect bgscan_learn is going to be
even more interesting.

TIA,
Andre.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.1.4 (SMP w/4 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages wpasupplicant depends on:
ii  adduser       3.113        
ii  initscripts   2.88dsf-13.12
ii  libc6         2.13-21      
ii  libdbus-1-3   1.4.16-1     
ii  libnl3        3.0-2        
ii  libpcsclite1  1.7.4-2      
ii  libreadline6  6.2-8        
ii  libssl1.0.0   1.0.0e-3     
ii  lsb-base      3.2-28       

wpasupplicant recommends no packages.

Versions of packages wpasupplicant suggests:
ii  libengine-pkcs11-openssl  0.1.8-2+b2
ii  wpagui                    0.7.3-5   

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/wpa_supplicant/functions.sh changed [not included]

-- no debconf information