[PATCH] hostapd: nl80211: Driver does not support authentication/association or connect commands

[Eugene]

The hostapd do not require connection stuff of STA.

The following commands is not required for AP:
- NL80211_CMD_CONNECT
- NL80211_CMD_DISCONNECT
- NL80211_CMD_ASSOCIATE
- NL80211_CMD_DISASSOCIATE
- NL80211_CMD_AUTHENTICATE
- NL80211_CMD_DEAUTHENTICATE

But the common code require support some of them.
As result the devices with AP only mode can not be initialized, with
error "nl80211: Driver does not support authentication/association or
connect commands".
That patch solve that problem.

BTW:
I think that more parts of nl80211 driver code can be hidden by
"#ifndef HOSTAPD".
Am I right?

Or there are present some internal rules, like minimize conditional compilation?

[Jouni Malinen]

Post by Eugene
The hostapd do not require connection stuff of STA.
- NL80211_CMD_CONNECT
- NL80211_CMD_DISCONNECT
- NL80211_CMD_ASSOCIATE
- NL80211_CMD_DISASSOCIATE
- NL80211_CMD_AUTHENTICATE
- NL80211_CMD_DEAUTHENTICATE
But the common code require support some of them.
As result the devices with AP only mode can not be initialized, with
error "nl80211: Driver does not support authentication/association or
connect commands".
That patch solve that problem.

Are all those changes really needed? Could you please identify the
minimal change that addresses only the operation that fails? Please also
read the top level CONTRIBUTIONS file and include Signed-hostap: tag in
the commit message when contributing patches to hostap.git.

Post by Eugene
I think that more parts of nl80211 driver code can be hidden by
"#ifndef HOSTAPD".
Am I right?
Or there are present some internal rules, like minimize conditional compilation?

The goal is to get rid of the #ifdef HOSTAPD blocks completely from
driver_nl80211.c since this is supposed to be common code that can be
shared between hostapd and wpa_supplicant without modification. As such,
I would prefer to address this AP-only-driver in more generic way that
does not require conditional compilation. Please keep in mind that
wpa_supplicant can also be used to operate AP mode operations.

There will likely be need for a new driver capability for indicating
whether station, AP, or both, modes are supported.