Hello community,
I currently have to face some bug reports against the Broadcom kmod-wl
package for kernel >= 3.6.0 in F-16 and F-17, since I switched that
module to the new kernel wireless API CFG80211. The old one, aka WEXT,
will be dropped in future kernels
(
https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commi...).
The problem is that some platforms work out of the box with the current
packages, and some others need some tweaks.
The two tweaks are:
- include lib80211 lib80211_crypt_tkip wl modules in kernel initramfs in
order to avoid a kernel panic at boot time.
- revert to WEXT API.
The first one seems to be relatively direct to handle. Add
a /etc/dracut.conf.d/20-wl.conf file with correct directive in it
(add_drivers+="lib80211 lib80211_crypt_tkip wl") in the package, and
appropriate %post and %postun section containing dracut command in the
package spec file.
Any tips on this part of the packaging are welcome.
The second one is not so trivial to handle as to be complete on this
subject same Broadcom devices (lspci reports) on different laptops give
different results. So I imagined that it would be left to the user to
choose the correct module API to install. But as the choice between the
two API is made at build time, the only way to achieve this goal for the
user is to install only the akmod-wl package (no kmod-wl package),
modify a configuration file manually, relaunch akmods command to get the
correct API for that module. The Makefile included in the sources will
be modified to include the configuration file at build time and to
adjust build settings correctly.
My question:
Do you think this method to resolve the issue is the good one?
How long the WEXT API will be available?
Any comments on this are welcome.
One caveat of these two methods is that dracut configuration file and
akmod API configuration file would be provided with standard kmod-wl
packages.
I provide as attachments the fedora.readme file and the dracut
configuration file I intend to add to the package if I opt for these
solutions. Thanks for reviewing them since my natural language is not
English.
What are the other precautions that I could have missed?
Thanks in advance for your responses.
Cordially,
--
Nicolas Viéville