Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

From: "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de>
To: "Philipp Hortmann" <philipp.g.hortmann@gmail.com>,
	"Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@kernel.org>,
	"Kalle Valo" <kvalo@kernel.org>,
	"Greg Kroah-Hartman" <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: "Nicolas Ferre" <nicolas.ferre@microchip.com>,
	"Alexandre Belloni" <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com>,
	"Claudiu Beznea" <claudiu.beznea@tuxon.dev>,
	"Jakub Kicinski" <kuba@kernel.org>, "Pavel Machek" <pavel@ucw.cz>,
	"David S . Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
	"Larry Finger" <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
	linux-staging@lists.linux.dev
Subject: Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2023 18:05:03 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <97e45bae-2489-4f04-b324-8359cfa15f4a@app.fastmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <08e266b5-cc6f-4428-bb50-11122a174e94@gmail.com>

On Sun, Oct 15, 2023, at 20:42, Philipp Hortmann wrote:
> On 10/13/23 17:36, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> At the moment, I'd suggest focusing on the drivers that still use wext 
>> (git grep -w iw_handler_def drivers), if we can show that rtl8192e, 
>> rtl8712 or ks7010 have been broken for a while, removing those would 
>> help with removing wext altogether.
>
>
> Hi,
>
> __rtl8192e__
> this hardware is available on ebay 13 times.
> ping statistics:
> 1191 packets transmitted, 1191 received, 0% packet loss, time 1192169ms
> rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.633/2.184/74.792/3.157 ms
> maximum download 12,5 MByte/s
>
> __rtl8712__
> stick packard bell AW-NU120
> ping statistics:
> 678 packets transmitted, 652 received, 3.83481% packet loss, time 678287ms
> rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.943/4.835/231.435/17.900 ms
> maximum download 12,5 MByte/s
>
> I would like to remove the private functions as the "wireless tools" 
> package is deprecated. The following functions are available:
> kernel@matrix-ESPRIMO-P710:~/Documents/git/kernels/staging$ iwpriv wlan0
> wlan0     Available private ioctls :
>            read32           (8BE0) : set   1 int   & get   0
>            write32          (8BE1) : set   1 int   & get   0
>            driver_ext       (8BE2) : set   0       & get   0
>            mp_ioctl         (8BE3) : set   0       & get   0
>            apinfo           (8BE4) : set   1 int   & get   0
>            setpid           (8BE5) : set   1 int   & get   0
>            wps_start        (8BE6) : set   1 int   & get   0
>            chplan           (8BE7) : set   1 int   & get   0
>
> What do you think about this?

Larry is the maintainer for rtl8712, so he'd be the one to answer
this. Out of the four drivers that are left using wext after
my current draft removal series, only ks7010 and rtl8712
use the private handlers, so in theory we could remove
the CONFIG_WEXT_PRIV first, but I'm not sure that makes
any difference if the plan is to convert all wext drivers
to cfg80211 anyway.

     Arnd