Compat-wireless release for 2010-06-18 is baked

Compat-wireless release for 2010-06-18 is baked

[Compat-wireless cronjob account]

>From git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/compat-wireless-2.6
   11542b5..75bb510  master     -> origin/master
   d584ab0..3eaa500  wl         -> origin/wl
>From git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next
   67eac11..49bc196  history    -> origin/history
 + 8668718...d568ec36 master     -> origin/master  (forced update)
 * [new tag]         next-20100618 -> next-20100618

compat-wireless code metrics

    498472 - Total upstream lines of code being pulled
      1410 - backport code changes
      1177 - backport code additions
       233 - backport code deletions
      5748 - backport from compat module
      7158 - total backport code
    1.4360 - % of code consists of backport work
      1218 - Crap changes not yet posted
      1179 - Crap additions not yet merged
        39 - Crap deletions not yet posted
    0.2443 - % of crap code

Base tree: linux-next.git
Base tree version: next-20100618
compat-wireless release: compat-wireless-2010-06-17-1-g75bb510

Multiple station interfaces with one wifi card

[Hakan Coskun]

Hi,

we are doing research in order to study the behaviour of virtual wifi interfaces with channel switching. After a simulative study, we started to perform some real world experiments with ath9k, which is able to run multiple wiphys on top of a card. This is working quite good. Of course there are several restrictions and performance problems, we are working on some scheduling algorithms to improve the operation.
But now to take it a step further, we plan to go for a mac80211 based virtualization, meaning to run multiple vifs in parallel in station mode. The first step is to run them on the same channel, but as expected this is not working, yet. We can create several interfaces with iw, there is no problem. Even scanning is working, but as soon as we want to connect to an open AP we get into trouble. Authentication and association are not working.
 
mac80211 needs to be extended with additional functionality like ath9k, to cope with multiple associations and channel switching, etc.. The internals of ath9k are clear to us, since the virtualization code is not big, and the patches well documented. We want to adapt them to mac80211, in order allow vifs to connect to APs simultaneously.

How can we track the sequence of operations during the runtime in order to get a better understanding of the mac80211. At the moment, we enabled tracing and debug messages for mac80211, this helps but is not sufficient to follow the functions step by step. We can put a lot of debugging messages into the files, but are there any "best practices" we should follow. 

Thanks,
Hakan