At Technical University of Munich we use MAC 802.11 TX status frames to
perform several measurements in MAC 802.11 setups.
With ath based drivers this was possible until commit d94a461d7a
("ath9k: use ieee80211_tx_status_noskb where possible") as the driver
ignored the IEEE80211_TX_CTL_REQ_TX_STATUS flag and always delivered
tx_status frames. Since that commit, this behavior was changed and the
driver now adheres to IEEE80211_TX_CTL_REQ_TX_STATUS.
Due to performance reasons, IEEE80211_TX_CTL_REQ_TX_STATUS is not set for
data frames from interfaces in managed mode. Hence, frames that are sent
from a managed mode interface do never deliver tx_status frames. This
remains true even if a monitor mode interface (the measurement interface)
is added to the same ieee80211 physical device. Thus, there is no
possibility for receiving tx_status frames for frames sent on an interface
in managed mode, if the driver adheres to IEEE80211_TX_CTL_REQ_TX_STATUS.
In order to force delivery of tx_status frames for research and debugging
purposes, implement a debugfs option force_tx_status for ieee80211 physical
devices. When this option is set for a physical device,
IEEE80211_TX_CTL_REQ_TX_STATUS is enabled in all packets sent from that
device. This option can be set via
/sys/kernel/debug/ieee80211/<dev>/force_tx_status. The default is disabled.
Co-developed-by: Charlie Groh <ga58taw@mytum.de>
Signed-off-by: Charlie Groh <ga58taw@mytum.de>
Signed-off-by: Julius Niedworok <julius.n@gmx.net>
Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>
276d9e82e0