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'
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^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?
(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.
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.)
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.
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.