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Re: Debian 2.6.32 CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY, wireless-regdb and crda



On Mon, 2010-02-01 at 09:58 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:

> I can help with this only if no one else is up for it. I personally
> however find building a key on the fly for each build pretty pointless
> and would like to know if a package would be acceptable upstream on
> Debian if OpenSSL is used to allow administrators to add their own
> keys into the /etc/wireless-regdb/pubkeys/ dir for CRDA and from the
> start only trust John's key.

As part of upstream, you're probably the best person to do the packaging
stuff for Debian.

The idea was that by default there would be no Debian key installed
because the text and binary databases would be unmodified. The build
system would detect if Debian had patched the databases and if so
generate a new key, sign the binary database with it and install the
public key to the /etc/wireless-regdb/pubkeys/ dir. Debian might need to
patch the database for the stable release.

Thanks for all the information about how wireless card firmware and
drivers interact with regulatory information.

> > Hmmm, OK. I guess that makes sense. I imagine it will definitely be the
> > source of some annoyance for users in the future though.
> 
> Tell me about it, but changing that would mean first getting
> regulatory agencies to allow regulatory compliance to fall down to the
> user when they customize a device's regulatory settings. As it stands
> that is not the case so all we can do upstream for now is allow users
> to enhance compliance, never allow more. There is also the complexity
> of calibration involved in allowing new channels but that is a
> separate topic as well.

There is also the opportunity for user-based advocacy for change in the
regulations. Whenever someone comes to the kernel wireless folks with a
situation where they have been prevented from connecting to a wireless
network because of restrictive wireless regulatory data, explain the
issue and give them a form letter they can send to their local
regulatory agency complaining about the situation and suggesting change.
A list of relevant regulatory agency contact details would be useful
here too I think.

Ideally the manufacturer should be obligated to give users hardware that
can be compliant for any level of radio license and defaults to being
compliant for the default radio license for the whole population. It
would then be up to individual users to comply with the relevant radio
license(s). Such a situation would then turn into a much bigger
enforcement problem, I guess that is the main reason it doesn't work
this way.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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