Testing the Wireless driver changes

[Dan Williams]

On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 01:38 +0800, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 10:08 -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> > Yes.  The active antennas firmware would need to be slightly altered to
> > start on firmware boot, but the normal XO firmware should certainly be
> > radio-off-until-driver-enabled (by setting IFF_UP or device open).
> 
> Let us make a clear distinction between the two types of 'active
> antenna' here. The ones which are actually attached to servers and
> acting as wireless devices for a computer, we want to act like in the
> XO. When they come up automatically into mesh repeater mode, that's
> actually a complete PITA -- and it means we can't reboot the servers
> because then the driver can't initialise the wireless because it's in
> mesh repeater mode and doesn't respond properly to being reset.

So wait, what's going on here?  I thought the devices attached to school
servers were just run-of-the-mill USB 8388 devices like the 8388
daughterboard of the XO, but different connector, right?

What is the post-boot firmware flash functionality supposed to apply to,
the host-less active antenna? (which is what I heretofore had
understood).

Dan

> Only for the standalone devices which we're going to hang in a corridor
> and feed 5v do we want _any_ kind of automatic network operation. And
> then it needs to be configurable -- we have to set the channel.
> 
> Since we need a way to configure the channel on the active antennae,
> let's use channel zero to indicate 'no automatic mesh'. And please can
> we have that firmware by tomorrow, Ulan Bator time -- so that I can
> actually set up the school server so that it's rebootable without
> subsequently having to disconnect and reconnect the firmware? 
> 
> I'd do it myself, but bug #429 bites again...
>