install

Stripping WifiAdmin Down

Hi there.

We are looking at using wifiadmin as the basis for a wireless mesh web
configuration.

We are planning on stripping out the user configuration code and perhaps
some of the usage code.  Then we'd like to add some hooks to proprietary
programs we have written to configure the nodes of the mesh.

Is this a valid use of the GPL if we provide the source code for our
changes to wifiadmin only but keep our private programs proprietary?

Cheers,
Chris
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McMaster University

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Re: Stripping WifiAdmin Down

From: Thanos Panousis <panousis <at> ceid.upatras.gr>
Subject: Re: [Wifiadmin-users] Stripping WifiAdmin Down
Date: 2005-06-16 12:56:31 GMT

Hello there,

Nice to see that you will be using wifiadmin to create something of your 
own.

I think, if you provide the sourcecode for your changes to wifiadmin, 
you will not break our licence. To my  knowledge, the GPL licence is 
violated, if the derivative work (your changes) of a GPL programme is 
not opensource. If any GPL programme is _linked_ with another programme, 
the last must also be under GPL. But in the case of PHP code, you will 
not be _linking_ our GPLed work with your proprietary programmes, you 
will be merely calling them externally.

Kinda like using mysql in proprietory code/sites.

May I ask what do those proprietary programmes do?

Christopher Ness wrote:

>Hi there.
>
>We are looking at using wifiadmin as the basis for a wireless mesh web
>configuration.
>
>We are planning on stripping out the user configuration code and perhaps
>some of the usage code.  Then we'd like to add some hooks to proprietary
>programs we have written to configure the nodes of the mesh.
>
>Is this a valid use of the GPL if we provide the source code for our
>changes to wifiadmin only but keep our private programs proprietary?
>
>Cheers,
>Chris
>  
>

Re: Stripping WifiAdmin Down

On Thu, 2005-06-16 at 16:13 +0300, Thanos Panousis wrote:
> Kinda like using mysql in proprietory code/sites.

Excellent, I have been designing a strong interface between the two
objects so that we can use them separately.  They are command line
programs like `iwconfig` and Wifiadmin gathers the output for display.

Could McMasters Wireless Group ask for limited rights as suggested by
section 4 of the GPL to explicitly allow us to execute proprietary
programs with WifiAdmin?  This would likely make my supervisors sleep a
little better.

My understanding of the GPL is very basic, but an explicit "Yes - you
can do that." would be nice.

> May I ask what do those proprietary programmes do?

Absolutely.  The programs are currently part of some research to test
and modify a wireless mesh for dynamic configurations.  Sounds fancy,
eh?  :)  But they will likely be based on network traffic in the mesh
and a few other degrees of freedom.

Thanks for the great code base!  
I just wanted to make sure the project developers were aware what we are
working on so that if we decide to _eventually_ create a product out of
the derivative work we will still be in good standing.

Cheers,
Chris
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wifi* displayed

Is there a way to ignore the wifi* interfaces when using HostAP?  I know
why wifiadmin displays everything in `iwconfig` but it would be nice to
have some interfaces not be output.

I took a look though the config.php file and did not see any filtering
variables.

Would this be a feature to add that other users would like to see?

It's annoying how wifi0 is the default display when I really want to see
wlan0.  ;)

The config file could hold a variable like:

$IGNORE_INTERFACES_REGEXP = "wifi*"

What is the standard for using config variables?  Some seem to be all
uppercase while others are lower case just like variables.

Cheers,
Chris
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Re: wifi* displayed

Yes that is the case, our variables are named in a coherent way, and 
that sucks. But there just a few vars there in config.php, so it fairly 
easy to implement a single naming convention.

You are also wright with the wifi interfaces that pop up. The last 
version of wifiadmin was made with older versions of hostap, that did 
not involve showing 2 ifs per wifi card. This must be fixed of course. 
There is no way in the current design, to not show some ifs. All the 
parsing of the wireless configuration is parsed on every request. So we 
got to figure how to design this....

I will post later with more ideas.

Christopher Ness wrote:

>Is there a way to ignore the wifi* interfaces when using HostAP?  I know
>why wifiadmin displays everything in `iwconfig` but it would be nice to
>have some interfaces not be output.
>
>I took a look though the config.php file and did not see any filtering
>variables.
>
>Would this be a feature to add that other users would like to see?
>
>It's annoying how wifi0 is the default display when I really want to see
>wlan0.  ;)
>
>The config file could hold a variable like:
>
>$IGNORE_INTERFACES_REGEXP = "wifi*"
>
>What is the standard for using config variables?  Some seem to be all
>uppercase while others are lower case just like variables.
>
>Cheers,
>Chris
>  
>

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Re: wifi* displayed

On Fri, 2005-06-17 at 20:21 +0300, Thanos Panousis wrote:
> Yes that is the case, our variables are named in a coherent way, and 
> that sucks. But there just a few vars there in config.php, so it fairly 
> easy to implement a single naming convention.

What format would you like to see new additions to the config file?

> You are also wright with the wifi interfaces that pop up. The last 
> version of wifiadmin was made with older versions of hostap, that did 
> not involve showing 2 ifs per wifi card. This must be fixed of course. 
> There is no way in the current design, to not show some ifs. All the 
> parsing of the wireless configuration is parsed on every request. So we 
> got to figure how to design this....
> 
> I will post later with more ideas.

Here is how I am currently looking though the code.

The pages that I see using wireless interface settings are:
	iwsettings.php
	iwstatus.php
	iwsecurity.php
	ifsettings.php - does, but separate from the above

I'm using version 0.0.4 of wifiadmin as my base, not CVS - would you
prefer I diff against CVS?  It is easier for me to track a stable
release instead of vendor CVS drops.

I added a check to get_wireless_status() that drops interfaces with the
substring "wifi" in them.  It would need to be extended to look up the
strings to exclude from the config file instead of being hard coded.

/*iwconfig output in an array with device names as keys*/
function get_wireless_status(){
        global $iwconfig_bin;
        $iwconfig_output = trim(`$iwconfig_bin`);
        $device_status_strings = explode("\n\n", $iwconfig_output);
        foreach($device_status_strings as $device_status_string){
                sscanf($device_status_string,"%s ",$device);
                if (strstr($device_status_string, "no wireless
extensions") !==
                        continue;
                if (strstr($device, "wifi") !== false)
                        continue;
                $devices_data[$device] =
parse_iwconfig($device_status_string);
                $devices_data[$device]["name"] = $device;
        }
        return $devices_data;
}

This covers all iw*.php pages, but not ifsettings.php which calls
get_ethernet_status() instead which could be modified in the same way,
therefore a function call would be nice since it's used at least twice.

Perhaps named 
        boolean display_interface()

True would mean to display the interface, false would mean not to
display it.

Is there a better place to put these interface checks?  No need for a
quick reply I'm moving on to other things this afternoon.

Cheers,
Chris
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McMaster University

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Re: wifi* displayed

Sorry for taking so long to reply, guess i would save you some time. I have 
already fixed this fake wifi thing, take a look at 
http://wifiadmin.sourceforge.net/, it is the most recent news posted (i made 
a patch against latest version of wifiadmin). Code in the cvs has it fixed 
too.

On Friday 17 June 2005 21:00, Christopher Ness wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-06-17 at 20:21 +0300, Thanos Panousis wrote:
> > Yes that is the case, our variables are named in a coherent way, and
> > that sucks. But there just a few vars there in config.php, so it fairly
> > easy to implement a single naming convention.
>
> What format would you like to see new additions to the config file?
>
> > You are also wright with the wifi interfaces that pop up. The last
> > version of wifiadmin was made with older versions of hostap, that did
> > not involve showing 2 ifs per wifi card. This must be fixed of course.
> > There is no way in the current design, to not show some ifs. All the
> > parsing of the wireless configuration is parsed on every request. So we
> > got to figure how to design this....
> >
> > I will post later with more ideas.
>
> Here is how I am currently looking though the code.
>
> The pages that I see using wireless interface settings are:
>  iwsettings.php
>  iwstatus.php
>  iwsecurity.php
>  ifsettings.php - does, but separate from the above
>
> I'm using version 0.0.4 of wifiadmin as my base, not CVS - would you
> prefer I diff against CVS?  It is easier for me to track a stable
> release instead of vendor CVS drops.
>
> I added a check to get_wireless_status() that drops interfaces with the
> substring "wifi" in them.  It would need to be extended to look up the
> strings to exclude from the config file instead of being hard coded.
>
> /*iwconfig output in an array with device names as keys*/
> function get_wireless_status(){
>         global $iwconfig_bin;
>         $iwconfig_output = trim(`$iwconfig_bin`);
>         $device_status_strings = explode("\n\n", $iwconfig_output);
>         foreach($device_status_strings as $device_status_string){
>                 sscanf($device_status_string,"%s ",$device);
>                 if (strstr($device_status_string, "no wireless
> extensions") !==
>                         continue;
>                 if (strstr($device, "wifi") !== false)
>                         continue;
>                 $devices_data[$device] =
> parse_iwconfig($device_status_string);
>                 $devices_data[$device]["name"] = $device;
>         }
>         return $devices_data;
> }
>
> This covers all iw*.php pages, but not ifsettings.php which calls
> get_ethernet_status() instead which could be modified in the same way,
> therefore a function call would be nice since it's used at least twice.
>
> Perhaps named
>         boolean display_interface()
>
> True would mean to display the interface, false would mean not to
> display it.
>
> Is there a better place to put these interface checks?  No need for a
> quick reply I'm moving on to other things this afternoon.
>
> Cheers,
> Chris

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Re: wifi* displayed

Stop working! thimios has already posted a patch for this in the CVS! :) 
sorry, but I had forgotten all about it...

Christopher Ness wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-06-17 at 20:21 +0300, Thanos Panousis wrote:
> 
>>Yes that is the case, our variables are named in a coherent way, and 
>>that sucks. But there just a few vars there in config.php, so it fairly 
>>easy to implement a single naming convention.
> 
> 
> What format would you like to see new additions to the config file?
> 
> 
>>You are also wright with the wifi interfaces that pop up. The last 
>>version of wifiadmin was made with older versions of hostap, that did 
>>not involve showing 2 ifs per wifi card. This must be fixed of course. 
>>There is no way in the current design, to not show some ifs. All the 
>>parsing of the wireless configuration is parsed on every request. So we 
>>got to figure how to design this....
>>
>>I will post later with more ideas.
> 
> 
> Here is how I am currently looking though the code.
> 
> The pages that I see using wireless interface settings are:
> 	iwsettings.php
> 	iwstatus.php
> 	iwsecurity.php
> 	ifsettings.php - does, but separate from the above
> 
> I'm using version 0.0.4 of wifiadmin as my base, not CVS - would you
> prefer I diff against CVS?  It is easier for me to track a stable
> release instead of vendor CVS drops.
> 
> I added a check to get_wireless_status() that drops interfaces with the
> substring "wifi" in them.  It would need to be extended to look up the
> strings to exclude from the config file instead of being hard coded.
> 
> /*iwconfig output in an array with device names as keys*/
> function get_wireless_status(){
>         global $iwconfig_bin;
>         $iwconfig_output = trim(`$iwconfig_bin`);
>         $device_status_strings = explode("\n\n", $iwconfig_output);
>         foreach($device_status_strings as $device_status_string){
>                 sscanf($device_status_string,"%s ",$device);
>                 if (strstr($device_status_string, "no wireless
> extensions") !==
>                         continue;
>                 if (strstr($device, "wifi") !== false)
>                         continue;
>                 $devices_data[$device] =
> parse_iwconfig($device_status_string);
>                 $devices_data[$device]["name"] = $device;
>         }
>         return $devices_data;
> }
> 
> This covers all iw*.php pages, but not ifsettings.php which calls
> get_ethernet_status() instead which could be modified in the same way,
> therefore a function call would be nice since it's used at least twice.
> 
> Perhaps named 
>         boolean display_interface()
> 
> True would mean to display the interface, false would mean not to
> display it.
> 
> Is there a better place to put these interface checks?  No need for a
> quick reply I'm moving on to other things this afternoon.
> 
> Cheers,
> Chris

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Wireless Settings UI

Which is the prefered UI for editing settings in a text box form?

The method used by iwsettings.php where the current value is printed
beside the header and the text box is left blank

 - or -

The method used by ifsettings.php where the current value is
pre-populated into the text box for the user.  I think I'd be leaning to
this method myself.

Cheers,
Chris
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-- 
Wireless Group,
McMaster University

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