Bug 281617

Summary:	wpa_suplicant man page includes non-existent option
Product:	Documentation	Reporter:	rkoberman
Component:	Manual Pages	Assignee:	freebsd-bugs (Nobody) <bugs>
Status:	New ---
Severity:	Affects Only Me	CC:	des, doc, gperciva, ziaee
Priority:	---
Version:	Latest
Hardware:	Any
OS:	Any

Description rkoberman 2024-09-20 20:56:37 UTC

The man page for the wpa_supplicant includes a '-f' option to write debug output to a file, but that option is not recognized and results in the printing of help to the screen end exiting. The help output does not mention '-f'.

While I would like to have the capability, is is not available.

In addition, severl options are listed in help that are not found in the man pages.These include:
  -C = ctrl_interface parameter (only used if -c is not)
  -e = entropy file
  -G = global ctrl_interface group
  -M = start describing new matching interface
 The addition of '-M' requires correcting the '-N'

Comment 1 fezmilky 2024-09-21 03:45:21 UTC

MARKED AS SPAM

Comment 2 Alexander Ziaee freebsd_triage

2024-09-22 00:14:05 UTC

^Triage: Confirmed. I am interested in fixing this manual. We do not have -f. Can you tell me more about what needs to be corrected in -N?

Comment 3 rkoberman 2024-09-22 21:04:45 UTC

(In reply to Alexander Ziaee from comment #2)
Sorry. The need to fix '-N' was erroneous.I crossed up '-M' (missing) and '-N'. Don't know how I did that. Call it a senior moment.

Comment 4 Graham Percival 2024-10-07 03:09:57 UTC

I suspect that this is a build-system problem, not a man problem.

I started off looking at the original source for wpa_supplicant (since it's in contrib/ ), and found their documentation:
https://w1.fi/cgit/hostap/tree/wpa_supplicant/doc/docbook/wpa_supplicant.sgml#n389

In particular, note
> (This is only available if <command>wpa_supplicant</command> was
> built with the <literal>CONFIG_DEBUG_FILE</literal> option.)

If you use your favourite text editor and open
    contrib/wpa/wpa_supplicant/main.c
then search for "-f", you'll find:
> #ifdef CONFIG_DEBUG_FILE
>                " [-f<debug file>]"
> #endif /* CONFIG_DEBUG_FILE */

At first glance, the Makefile and defconfig (is that used by FreeBSD?) look like they enable CONFIG_DEBUG_FILE.  But clearly that's not happening, so I think the next step would be to figure out why.

(I don't plan on investigating this issue further at the moment.)

Comment 5 Dag-Erling Smørgrav freebsd_committer

2024-10-07 19:51:40 UTC

Assuming you're referring to a Makefile you found under contrib/wpa: no, FreeBSD does not use that.  It uses a set of Makefiles found under usr.sbin/wpa instead, and does not define CONFIG_DEBUG_FILE, although that's easy enough to change if deemed worthwhile.

Comment 6 rkoberman 2024-10-14 02:18:10 UTC

I believe that the man file should match the program as it i built by default in FreeBSD. I suspect that CONFIG_DEBUG_FILE makes sense as long as there is no down side. But, why i it not default? I've got to think that there must have been a reason. I can't see any obvious security issues, but I don't know just what might be written to a file that might be too accessible. I'd be slightly concerned possible performance issues. I'll admit that this looks unlikely.

There is also the 'G'. I have no idea what it is. Never run into the global ctrl_interface, let alone the global ctrl_interface group.