debcrafters-packages team mailing list archive

[Robie Basak <2117497@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pre-upload SRU review for the principle of this update

2.11 is ahead of Debian. The development release in Ubuntu only got this
support in July. This does not give me confidence that this is well
tested in the field, whether in Ubuntu or in the wider ecosystem. In
particular for wifi, there are compatibility concerns with a very wide
range of hardware out there.

> that will test the compatibility with MLO

Will you be testing *actual* function with MLO? If this is the reason
for the proposed SRU, I think you should be testing MLO extensively in
real world situations.

What about the test matrix for the various different wifi authentication
arrangements that wpa supports?

> The kernel is compatible with these since 24.04 (Noble)

Which kernel? The release kernel, HWE kernel or both? Your test plan
needs to be specific and comprehensive on kernel testing.

For _microrelease_ SRUs, we require:
https://documentation.ubuntu.com/sru/en/latest/reference/requirements/#new-
upstream-microreleases

Since this is a feature change, I'd expect something that like to be a
requirement, too. For wpa, a test suite seems difficult, but I think
it's worth analysing upstream code quality and quality history and what
they do manage in lieu of that. The previous  2:2.10- *24* is a red flag
here.

> [ Where problems could occur ]

A really big one here is that if we break a user, it is likely to be
very difficult for them to update to a regression fix with their wifi
broken.

A second one is that wifi configuration and hardware and therefore our
required compatibility matrix is much more varied than with an average
SRU.


I'm not completely opposed to an SRU for this in Noble's lifetime, but it seems premature at the moment. Perhaps doing this in noble-backports first would be a good start, so that users can opt-in, and we'll get a better picture of real world impact before risking wider regression across all users? The last thing we want is a wide swathe of users having wifi problems due to a hardware or configuration compatibility issue we didn't know about.

Given the current status of deployment of 2.11 across the ecosystem, I
don't think testing five hopefully different configurations is enough.

I mentioned earlier elsewhere that adding Wifi 7 sounds like a hardware
enablement. It does sound like something users might consider to be
towards the end of Noble's lifetime. But right now, I don't see much of
a compelling case for improvements in UX for Noble here, when balanced
against the risk.

** Summary changed:

- Upgrade to 2.11
+ No Wifi 7 MLO support

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of
Debcrafters packages, which is subscribed to wpa in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2117497

Title:
  No Wifi 7 MLO support

Status in wpa package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in wpa source package in Noble:
  New
Status in wpa source package in Plucky:
  New
Status in wpa source package in Questing:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  SRU Justification:

  [ Impact ]

   * This is a hardware-enablement SRU

   * Recent wifi modules are compatible with wifi 7 that comes with a
  bunch of cool features like Multi-Link Operation (MLO) which speeds up
  wifi. The kernel is compatible with these since 24.04 (Noble)

   * wpa 2.11 is required for these features to be available. it's
  available in Questing already. The release note is here:
  https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/hostap/2024-July/042847.html

   * There were 2295 commits from 2.10 to 2.11. During these, the wifi 7
  support and reliability was gradually improved. It feels much safer to
  backport the version from Questing entirely compared to cherry-picking
  patches.

   * The 2.11 version landed in Questing a bit more than a month ago,
  which gave time for this new version to be tested by all questing
  users.

  [ Fix ]

   * The proposed fix consists in backporting the version from questing,
  entirely.

  [ Test Plan ]

   1. Run the Wireless Network certification suite from Checkbox, that will
      * Connect and disconnect to all kind of wifi
      * Scan the network

      wireless/wireless_scanning_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_wpa_bg_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_open_bg_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_wpa_n_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_open_n_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_wpa_ac_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_open_ac_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_wpa_ax_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_wpa3_ax_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_open_ax_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_wpa_be_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_wpa3_be_nm_interface
      wireless/wireless_connection_open_be_nm_interface

   2. Run the Multi-link operation test suite from Checkbox, that will
  test the compatibility with MLO

      wireless/wifi7_mlo_interface

   3. My test plan involves having 5 persons using this daily for a week
  (at least on Noble). I'd like to have a diverse set of routers and
  machines involved. The testers will be asked to be more aware than
  usual about wifi disconnections, and reliability. I'll ask them to run
  bandwith test every morning with both the proposed package and the
  original one.

  [ Where problems could occur ]

   * Given the size of the update, any wifi-related issue could happen.
   * The test plan tries to cover as much wifi usage as possible to reflect this.

  [ Other Info ]

   * I've been using wpa 2.11 on my side for a month, on Noble. No issue
  there, but I don't have a wifi 7 router.

  --------------------------------------------------------

  original description:

  hostapd/wpa_supplicant got a new version:
  https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/hostap/2024-July/042847.html

  This issue is about bumping the version Ubuntu. Debian is not up-to-
  date, yet.

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