[Dapper] Who decided to hose wpasupplicant?

[Reinhard Tartler]

Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> I was just trying to figure out why my network connection
> was uncommonly slow, so I did an iwconfig and noticed that I
> was connecting to a neighbor's unencrypted access point
> rather than to my own WPA-encrypted one. This would explain
> the slowness. So I did a 'ps aux' and noticed that
> wpasupplicant was not in fact running. This was odd. Next
> step was to run '/etc/init.d/wpasupplicant start', which ...
> doesn't exist anymore!

Thats right, the way wpasupplicant is started used to be via the init
script. We (the debian wpasupplicant developers) have choosen to
deprecate this mode of operation of wpasupplicant, because it causes
some fundamental problems, like lack of integration with ifupdown.

Therefore, Kel Moddermann has worked on a new scheme of integrating
wpasupplicant, namely using a hook in
/etc/network/if-preup.d/wpasupplicant, which starts wpasupplicant with
information, you give in /etc/network/interfaces. This solves a lot of
problems, but is a fundamental different mode of operation than it used
to be. 

We are still working on an upgrade path from the old world order to the
new scheme. Be invited to discuss this here:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-wpa-devel

> Am I being unreasonable here? If Ubuntu expects users to
> help with, say, Dapper, it has to treat them better than
> this. A reasonable response is that power users should
> expect some carelessness.

right. I think the rationale of Scott, who uploaded a quite work in
progress package from our svn repository to ubuntu was that
wpasupplicant used to be in universe, a unsupported section of ubuntu,
and didn't care much about upgrade patch from former universe users.
wpasupplicant is going for main, and perhaps even on the ubuntu 6.06
(live) cd, so it needs nice integration with the rest of the system.

I agree with you that the lack of a clean upgrade path is very
unsatisfactory. Since we need this upgrade path in debian anyway, I
herby welcome anyone to participate in discussion, development and
testing at the debian/ubuntu wpasupplicant team here: 

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-wpa-devel


Greetings,
	Reinhard