hostapd on Snappy

[Mark Shuttleworth]

On 13/06/15 09:00, Mickey Barboi wrote:
> I'm about to start on a considerable project porting over a wireless
> framework from WRT. I'm hoping to be able to expose hostapd to running
> snaps.
>
> Is it possible to embed the tool into a framework snap?

Hi Mickey, welcome.

Yes, it will be possible and we'll be glad to help with the custom
framework policy that will need to be created.

This list is the right place to ask for help if / when you get stuck. I
can point you to specific people by private mail if you need.

On a separate node, if you have thoughts on how we could  provide
general naming and metadata support to enable your wireless framework to
work on a wider range of hardware, that would be a very interesting
topic. For example, if you have thoughts on ways to provide a hardware
description in the device snap that describes radio's and network
interfaces and router interfaces with names that could both be bound to
certain functionality and exposed to the end user, so that your wireless
framework "just works" on that hardware, we'll be glad to dive in together.

In playing with WRT I've found it often to be tricky to know exactly
what in the hardware maps to what in the UI. There' NVRAM and all sorts
of other config that's accumulated over the years - for good reason no
doubt, but it nonetheless makes it tricky to understand what's going on
with a semi-supported piece of hardware.

When exploring that, I would myself wishing for:

 * a well defined hardware description covering things like:
    - radio's 2.4ghz, 5ghz
    - switch ASIC's
    - ADSL / NIC interfaces

 * separation of "board name" from "device name / description", e.g.
    - wlan0 ("board name") and 2.4 Ghz Radio 1 ("device name")
    - eth0 ("board name") and "LAN 1" ("device name")

If you are doing a straight port, it will probably easiest just to bring
existing conventions across. But if you think there is value in what I'm
describing, let me know.

Cheers,
Mark