WDS stopped working in 21.02, looking for bug in netifd

[Daniel Haid]

I have investigated a bit more.

Even without the "fix", after each reboot WDS there seems to be about a 
50% chance of WDS working.

To reliably reproduce the bug, it is necessary to do
/etc/init.d/network restart
with the WDS client connected.

Now what I noticed is that using the netifd version with the bug, after 
the network restart the interface wlan0.sta1 is DOWN (and the WDS client 
not reachable) while using the version with the "fix" the interface 
wlan0.sta1 is UP (and the WDS client is reachable).

However, in the version with the bug, if I manually set the interface to 
UP with "ip link set up dev wlan0.sta1", it now says that the interface 
is UP, but the WDS client is still not reachable.

On the other hand, if use a version with the "fix", then initally the 
WDS client is reachable. But if I now issue

ip link set down dev wlan0.sta1
ip link set up dev wlan0.sta1

then the WDS client is not reachable anymore!

Who creates these interfaces "wlan0.sta1"? Maybe we are not allowed to 
set them to DOWN after they have been created. Or after setting them to 
UP there is some further initalization required which netifd does not 
do, but the original process that creates these interfaces does?

I will investigate further. I am also grateful for any suggestions.

I am not subscribed to the list; please send Cc to me.

D.H.