Comments on PaNiC Random Rant (or how we used to call it: .plan): Porting WiFi drivers to Android

Next update will be for Android 4.x ICS

2012-02-05T01:49:55.223+02:00

Next update will be for Android 4.x ICS

Panic, Are you still taking some wifi related ques...

2012-01-16T20:44:42.085+02:00

Panic,
Are you still taking some wifi related questions?

http://blog.naver.com/ernice/20146498720 Thanks. ...

2011-12-23T07:17:17.147+02:00

http://blog.naver.com/ernice/20146498720

Thanks. I successed with RTL8188cu usb wifi modules and NFS

Hi, I followed the steps as you have mentioned in...

2011-08-20T12:24:44.328+03:00

Hi,

I followed the steps as you have mentioned in the post, using Android Sockets, but I get an error as follows:-

I/wpa_supplicant( 1221): CTRL_IFACE monitor[0]: 13 - Permission denied
I/wpa_supplicant( 1221): CTRL-EVENT-STATE-CHANGE id=-1 state=1 BSSID=00:00:00:00:00:00
I/wpa_supplicant( 1221): CTRL_IFACE monitor[0]: 13 - Permission denied.

Please let me know if you have come across this issue.

Thanks & Regards,
Yegnesh

Hi panic, Thanks a lot for this beautiful guide. I...

2011-05-04T14:57:46.963+03:00

Hi panic,
Thanks a lot for this beautiful guide.
I could now make wifi working on GingerBread.

The issue I am facing is, it doesn't scan any network(it doesnt give error thoug). (ping works fine)

wpa_supplicant.conf
--------------------
update_config=1
ctrl_interface=DIR=/data/system/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wifi
eapol_version=1
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1

What I do is,
"insmode wlan.ko"
To do it from shell, I have 2 shells open.
1. wpa_supplicant -dd -Dwext -imlan0 -c/data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf

2. wpa_cli -p /data/system/wpa_cupplicant
> scan

Logcat
========
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): CMD: PING
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): CMD: SCAN
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): Setting scan request: 0 sec 0 usec
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): wpa_supplicant_scan: scan_req = 2, ap_scan = 1
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): State: INACTIVE -> SCANNING
I/wpa_supplicant( 1450): CTRL-EVENT-STATE-CHANGE id=-1 state=2 BSSID=00:00:00:00:00:00
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): Starting AP scan (broadcast SSID)
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): wpa_driver_wext_combo_scan: Start
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): Scan requested - scan timeout 10 seconds
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): CMD: PING
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): Scan timeout - try to get results
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): Received 0 bytes of scan results (0 BSSes)
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): New scan results available
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): No suitable AP found.
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): State: SCANNING -> INACTIVE
I/wpa_supplicant( 1450): CTRL-EVENT-STATE-CHANGE id=-1 state=1 BSSID=00:00:00:00:00:00
D/wpa_supplicant( 1450): CMD: PING

Can you please help out in terms of what I am missing???

hoyushen: Might be possible with gingerbread, sin...

2011-03-22T17:20:47.929+02:00

hoyushen:

Might be possible with gingerbread, since I've seen that the wpa_supplicant and dhcp are now started from wifi.c in hardware_legacy/wifi
You will need to modify wifi.c to get the interface name from sysfs and build up the wpa_supplicant command.

proveyourselfthom: No the X11 drivers are no long...

2011-03-22T17:19:01.530+02:00

proveyourselfthom:

No the X11 drivers are no longer updated, although Mandriva had picked up my driver and added fixes and updates. I think the driver name was sisimedia or something similar.

Dear Sir First, thank you for your shares, it rea...

2011-03-04T11:43:54.757+02:00

Dear Sir

First, thank you for your shares, it really helps me a lot. Now I have a question of supporting multi-WiFi drivers at the same time. Is there any possibility not to init interface name(ex.wlan0,wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c xxxxx......) in init.rc? Because different WiFi drivers have different interface names. Or could you provide any other suggestions for this purpose? My work-arounded solution is to modify the same interface name for different WiFi drivers in src code(ex.wlan0). Then modify wifi.c(hardware\libhardware_legacy\wifi) to load different WiFi modules base on VID/PID table, which I've added for this purpose. But I think it's not a good solution. I'd appreciate of your comments. Thank you for your kindly help again.

ps. my email is hoyushen@gmail.com

Sincerely, Kevin

Sorry but I haven't found any way to contact y...

2011-02-22T16:06:55.653+02:00

Sorry but I haven't found any way to contact you. So, why your sis drivers aren't part of Xorg?
Is it updated?
Thank you.

Hi, I'd like very much to speak to you about ...

2011-01-22T00:39:34.751+02:00

Hi,

I'd like very much to speak to you about your informative post on porting Wi-Fi drivers to Android. Are you interested in freelance consulting work? I'd be really grateful if you could contact me - blake@hfield.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

-Blake

If you are interested, I have done it for supplica...

2010-11-01T07:38:16.809+02:00

If you are interested, I have done it for supplicant 0.6.10: it's here:
http://git.alwaysinnovating.com/cgit.cgi/ai.android/tree/preprocess/froyo/wifi.patch
The only notable difference is .get_scan_results2

Great stuff! Works like a charm on Eclair. What ab...

2010-09-28T20:08:35.408+03:00

Great stuff! Works like a charm on Eclair. What about Froyo and wpa_supplicant_6?

Thanks Nicu. I wish I had found your post a couple...

2010-09-03T02:28:26.454+03:00

Thanks Nicu. I wish I had found your post a couple of days earlier, but even so, it saved me considerable time configuring things for one of our customers.

I posted some notes on my experiences on our blog:
http://boundarydevices.com/blogs/?p=284

Hi, I followed the steps to enable wifi on froyo. ...

2010-08-23T16:47:36.828+03:00

Hi, I followed the steps to enable wifi on froyo. wifi is getting enabled but when tried to connect it is not setting system properties like dhcp.eth0.ipaddress and other. it is setting only dhcp.eth0.dns1, dhcp.eth0.dns2 and dns3. whether I need to configure or change to set all system properties?

panic,i want to use upnp-service discovery in andr...

2010-08-11T13:38:45.046+03:00

panic,i want to use upnp-service discovery in andriod.Do you i/p's about that?
Any workiing library sources/refernces.

Thanks
Kiranmai

Kiran the patch and howto is for wpa_supplicat not...

2010-08-11T09:49:28.862+03:00

Kiran the patch and howto is for wpa_supplicat not for the wpa_supplicant_6 that appeared on froyo. I will look on _6 version soon.

Hi, I'm trying to build wpa_supplicant_6 (And...

2010-08-10T14:34:04.576+03:00

Hi,

I'm trying to build wpa_supplicant_6 (Andriod 2.1),have made the modifications as said.But im getting build errors
-----------------------------------------
config.c:60: error: expected declaration specifiers or ‘...’ before ‘size_t’
config.c: In function ‘wpa_config_parse_string’:
config.c:66: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘os_strrchr’
config.c:66: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast
config.c:67: error: ‘NULL’ undeclared (first use in this function)
config.c:67: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
config.c:67: error: for each function it appears in.)
config.c:69: error: ‘len’ undeclared (first use in this function)
config.c:70: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘os_malloc’
----------------------------------------

Also pls clarify where the kernel module needs to copied.

Thanks
Kiranmai

Hi panic, thanks for your work. It helped me a lo...

2010-08-03T17:14:49.991+03:00

Hi panic,

thanks for your work. It helped me a lot.

Here some improvements:

@ point 4
if you use dhcp in init.rc you should also add a working folder.

mkdir /data/misc/dhcp 0770 dhcp dhcp
chmod 0770 /data/misc/dhcp

@ point 5
you have to use the wpa_supplicant.conf in /data/misc/wifi because in /system/etc/wifi/ is only a template which is write protected. to save configured networks you need to have write access to the conf file.

@ point 8
your awext driver patch misses a small part.
diff --git a/drivers.c b/drivers.c
index 45c2f55..cc5621c 100644
--- a/drivers.c
+++ b/drivers.c
@@ -15,6 +15,9 @@
#include "includes.h"

+#ifdef CONFIG_DRIVER_AWEXT
+extern struct wpa_driver_ops wpa_driver_awext_ops; /* driver_awext.c */
+#endif /* CONFIG_DRIVER_AWEXT */
#ifdef CONFIG_DRIVER_WEXT
extern struct wpa_driver_ops wpa_driver_wext_ops; /* driver_wext.c */
#endif /* CONFIG_DRIVER_WEXT */
@@ -62,6 +65,9 @@ extern struct wpa_driver_ops wpa_driver_custom_ops; /* driver_ti.c */

struct wpa_driver_ops *wpa_supplicant_drivers[] =
{
+#ifdef CONFIG_DRIVER_AWEXT
+ &wpa_driver_awext_ops,
+#endif /* CONFIG_DRIVER_AWEXT */
#ifdef CONFIG_DRIVER_WEXT
&wpa_driver_wext_ops,
#endif /* CONFIG_DRIVER_WEXT */

Hi In Step6, building it as a module, When you s...

2010-06-02T18:36:04.860+03:00

Hi

In Step6, building it as a module,
When you say:
"Make sure you copy your kernel module when building android to the correct location."

What is the correct location ? I built my driver on linux and copied the generated wl.ko file to the out/target/product/xxx/system/lib/modules/2.6.29-android-x86/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/wl/wl.ko

But, I get "Exec format error" when I try to do insmod wl.ko.

How do I include the module to be built by android ? Mine is a broadcom 4311 wireless card.

Regards
Sireesha.

@yonathana You have syntax errors on your dhcpcd ...

2010-05-12T14:36:12.287+03:00

@yonathana You have syntax errors on your dhcpcd line also check permissions for /system/etc/wifi

@Oramon Your driver doesn't support WRATE ioctl that means you will have no link speed information but wifi should be working without.

Dear sir, I had setup my device with wpa_supplican...

2010-05-12T05:11:19.622+03:00

Dear sir, I had setup my device with wpa_supplicant working good. But the message "ioctl[SIOCGIWRATE]: No such device" is showed after linkspeed command parsed by driver_awext.c. Would you please help me to figure out where to setup the correct interface in this situation? Thank you~

Should have read access to wifi user/group. Also s...

2010-05-10T17:57:57.508+03:00

Should have read access to wifi user/group. Also specify -Dwext as driver.

Also when i do a command line init as soon as syst...

2010-05-10T17:32:53.593+03:00

Also when i do a command line init as soon as system boots
wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c/system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf -ddI/StatusBarPolicy( 802): received intent android.intent.action.TIME_TICK

D/wpa_supplicant( 989): Initializing interface 'wlan0' conf '/system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf' driver 'default' ctrl_interface 'N/A' bridge 'N/A'
D/wpa_supplicant( 989): Configuration file '/system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf' -> '/system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf'
D/wpa_supplicant( 989): Reading configuration file '/system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf'
E/wpa_supplicant( 989): Failed to read or parse configuration '/system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf'.
D/wpa_supplicant( 989): Failed to add interface wlan0
D/wpa_supplicant( 989): Cancelling scan request
D/wpa_supplicant( 989): Cancelling authentication timeout
# I/StatusBarPolicy( 802): received intent android.intent.action.TIME_TICK

# cat /system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf
ctrl_interface=DIR=/data/system/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wifi
update_config=1

This is what i see ? Wonder why the wpa_supplicant .conf is not being parsed

This is what i did panic : drop both your files in...

2010-05-10T17:24:54.153+03:00

This is what i did panic : drop both your files in the respective dir and cross check in the rfs if they are same
Check permissions of
s -l /data/system
-rw-rw-r-- system system 35326 2000-01-01 00:00 packages.xml
-rw------- system system 8 2000-01-01 00:01 syncmanager.prefs
drwxrwx--x system system 2000-01-01 00:00 registered_services
drwxrwxrwx wifi wifi 2000-01-01 00:00 wpa_supplicant
-rw------- system system 4096 2000-01-01 00:00 entropy.dat
-rw------- system system 171 2000-01-01 00:00 wallpaper_info.xml
-rw-rw---- system system 16384 2000-01-01 00:00 accounts.db
-rw------- system system 604 2000-01-01 00:00 batterystats.bin
drwx------ system system 2000-01-01 00:00 usagestats
-rw------- system system 64 2000-01-01 00:00 appwidgets.xml

I/ActivityManager( 802): Starting activity: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MAIN cmp=com.android.settings/.WirelessSettings }
D/dalvikvm( 802): GC freed 9763 objects / 499352 bytes in 96ms
I/ActivityManager( 802): Displayed activity com.android.settings/.WirelessSettings: 556 ms (total 556 ms)
W/WifiHW ( 802): Could not open /proc/modules: No such file or directory
I/StatusBarPolicy( 802): received intent android.net.wifi.WIFI_STATE_CHANGED
D/SettingsWifiEnabler( 985): Received wifi state changed from Disabled to Enabling
D/WifiService( 802): ACTION_BATTERY_CHANGED pluggedType: 1
E/WifiHW ( 802): Unable to open connection to supplicant on "/data/system/wpa_supplicant/wlan0": No such file or directory
D/SettingsWifiEnabler( 985): Received wifi state changed from Enabling to Enabled
I/StatusBarPolicy( 802): received intent android.net.wifi.WIFI_STATE_CHANGED
E/WifiHW ( 802): Unable to open connection to supplicant on "/data/system/wpa_supplicant/wlan0": No such file or directory
E/WifiHW ( 802): Unable to open connection to supplicant on "/data/system/wpa_supplicant/wlan0": No such file or directory
I/StatusBarPolicy( 802): received intent android.intent.action.TIME_TICK
E/WifiHW ( 802): Unable to opeinit: no such service 'dhcpcdwlan0'
n connection to supplicant on "/data/system/wpa_supplicant/wlan0": No such file or directory
V/WifiStateTracker( 802): Supplicant died unexpectedly
E/WifiStateTracker( 802): Could not stop DHCP
D/NetworkStateTracker( 802): setDetailed state, old =IDLE and new state=DISCONNECTED
D/ConnectivityService( 802): ConnectivityChange for WIFI: DISCONNECTED/DISCONNECTED
I/EthernetService( 802): setEthState from 2 to 2
init: no such service 'dhcpcdwlan0'
D/SettingsWifiEnabler( 985): Received wifi state changed from Enabled to Disabling
I/StatusBarPolicy( 802): received intent android.net.wifi.supplicant.CONNECTION_CHANGE
I/StatusBarPolicy( 802): received intent android.net.wifi.WIFI_STATE_CHANGED

Am i at loss of ideas, Any clues what could be wrong ?

Also try to turnoff/turnon wifi, maybe wpa_supplic...

2010-05-10T12:41:00.046+03:00

Also try to turnoff/turnon wifi, maybe wpa_supplicant hasn't yet created the socket. I've seen this on my build.
You should see something similar to this in logcat (if you enabled wpa_supplicant debug):

D/wpa_supplicant( 843): Initializing interface 'wlan0' conf '/system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf' driver 'awext' ctrl_interface 'N/A' bridge 'N/A'
D/wpa_supplicant( 843): Configuration file '/system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf' -> '/system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf'
D/wpa_supplicant( 843): Reading configuration file '/system/etc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf'
D/wpa_supplicant( 843): ctrl_interface='wlan0'