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Migrate from libiw to libnl for wireless support #1001

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nullr0ute opened this issue Aug 29, 2020 · 6 comments · May be fixed by #1879
Open

Migrate from libiw to libnl for wireless support #1001

nullr0ute opened this issue Aug 29, 2020 · 6 comments · May be fixed by #1879
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feature suggest addition of new functionality that isn't currently supported in any way good first issue straightforward enough for first-time contributors to be able to implement themselves networking related to network information reporting

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@nullr0ute
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Issue

The wireless extensions interface to support WiFi has been long obsolete and doesn't support a lot of the new 802.11 functionality in the kernel. There's also discussion in the kernel community about removing it as it's been long obsolete.

Information

The new interface for dealing with 802.11 wireless interfaces on Linux is the nl80211 interface which can be used via libnl from a API PoV and the iw command line tool. The advantage is there's a lot more information and support for newer wireless technologies. A lot of distros are also starting to disable the old kernel wext support.

Information for iw is available here: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/iw
Information for libnl3 is at: http://www.infradead.org/~tgr/libnl/

@brndnmtthws brndnmtthws added the enhancement suggests alteration of existing functionality to better support different use cases label Sep 2, 2020
@github-actions
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This issue is stale because it has been open 365 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment, or this issue will be closed in 30 days.

@github-actions github-actions bot added the Stale requires attention because it hasn't been updated in a long time label Jan 28, 2023
@nullr0ute
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This is still relevant, in fact even more so because newer wifi (at least wifi 7) will be blocked from the old wireless extensions so won't appear.

@github-actions github-actions bot removed the Stale requires attention because it hasn't been updated in a long time label Jan 30, 2023
@AAnzel
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AAnzel commented May 8, 2023

I agree with @nullr0ute. This issue should have high priority.

@Caellian Caellian added good first issue straightforward enough for first-time contributors to be able to implement themselves feature suggest addition of new functionality that isn't currently supported in any way networking related to network information reporting and removed enhancement suggests alteration of existing functionality to better support different use cases labels May 1, 2024
@Caellian
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Caellian commented May 1, 2024

Attaching details from my other issue:

the version of conky available in the fedora repository does not support wifi.

Conky uses an old library to access wifi data from your system. This library is now deprecated in fedora.

hence fedora packages conky without wireless support since fedora 36 :(

Originally posted by @ernesto1 in #1664 (comment)

Related build options: BUILD_WLAN

Old include is libiw.h, new structures are:

Developer guide: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.9/80211/index.html

@Caellian Caellian linked a pull request May 1, 2024 that will close this issue
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@raviksharma
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libiw-dev (wireless-tools) is being removed from Ubuntu 24.10. You can use libnl3 as a replacement. Here is Ubuntu 24.10 schedule for reference.

@ilf
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ilf commented Nov 13, 2024

Current kernels emit a warning:

kernel: warning: `conky' uses wireless extensions which will stop working for Wi-Fi 7 hardware; use nl80211

#1588

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feature suggest addition of new functionality that isn't currently supported in any way good first issue straightforward enough for first-time contributors to be able to implement themselves networking related to network information reporting
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6 participants