Need help to write a new driver for a new wireless device (not yet in the market).

[Christian Buennig]

Hi,

some notes concerning wireless events ..

Sriharsha Vedurmudi wrote:
> Friends,
>  I am a novice in Wireless drivers (did some Ethernet based drivers
> though). I have a new 802.11b/g chip (not publically available yet)
> with its internal documentation and need help from the community to
> write a driver for it in Linux.
>  I am using an Linux port (kernel 2.6.19-2) on an ARM based SoC (with
> WE version 21). To begin with I have implemented the basics and my
> system now associates with open mode AP and WEP based AP. Now, I want
> to test out its WPA-PSK functionality. Are the following ioctls
> sufficient or do I need to implement more (apart from the basic ones)?
> SIOCSIWMODE,
> SIOCSIWGENIE,
> SIOCSIWAUTH,
> SIOCSIWESSID
> 
> Also, how do I use Wireless_Events (I am not able to find any proper
> documentation for the same).

What exactly do you mean by "use"? Listening for them in a user space
application or raising them within the driver?

Events are implemented with netlink sockets to transfer them from the
driver to user space.

Example code for listening can be found in the source code of the
wireless tools:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html#latest
and there in the file iwevent.c

Example code for raising an event can be found, for instance, in the
Madwifi code:
http://madwifi.org/browser/trunk/net80211/ieee80211_input.c and there in
the function iwspy_event(), near line 145

However, I am not that up to date about wireless driver development but
doesn't the generic Linux 80211 stack implement all the event things?

> Apart from this, is there some documentation (like 'Linux Device
> Drivers') that specifically tutors someone at writing a driver for a
> wireless station?
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> VSH.