Marvell 88W8688 AP-mode userspace utility

[Dan Williams]

On Mon, 2010-09-06 at 18:39 +0200, Alan Franzoni wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I hope I'm asking the right place.
> 
> As many other Guruplug Server users, I've got an issue with the access
> point mode for Marvell 88W8688 chipset. While there's a contributed
> patch from Marvell, enabling such support in the Linux kernel:
> 
> http://sheeva.with-linux.com/sheeva/2.6.35.4/source/0002-Driver-for-Marvell-Libertas-8688-SDIO-micro-AP-suppo-2.6.35.patch
> 
> The small utility called 'uaputl' which was distributed by Marvell or
> Globalscale along its Debian flavour which comes preinstalled with the
> plug has no available source code - and I suppose this is one of the
> reasons because the driver hasn't made into the official kernel yet -
> it's virtually unusable so far.
> 
> It's used to set the ap mode and configuration for the wireless adapter.
> 
> Direct contact to Globalscale or Marvell has failed so far, but I
> thought somebody in this list may be able to help me and all the other
> Guruplug owners who got suddenly stuck.
> 
> Any idea if there's another way to setup the ap mode - without such
> utility and without crawling through the kernel code to find out all the
> ioctls - or whether there's any chance to get in contact with someone
> that can release the code itself?

Interesting, I hadn't seen that.  Uses different firmware (uap_fw.h) and
is not a small patch, but it's a good indication of what we'd need to do
in the libertas driver to get it working.  The ideal situation is:

1) we integrate the support with the upstream libertas driver so that
you can just change the  mode instead of having to load a whole new
driver

2) we use nl80211/cfg80211 so it works great with hostap and
wpa_supplicant's "light" AP mode

That's a pretty big task though.  We'll have to look at the interfaces
between the driver and the uap userspace daemon, but in all likelihood
it's just doing what hostapd or wpa_supplicant already does.

Dan