Package: xfce4-wavelan-plugin Version: 0.5.5-3+b1 Severity: normal Hi,
I put together a lovely detailed response to this bug but something went wrong and it never made it into the BTS. and now I have to write it again and I have to write it fast so it won't be as good. kind of a bummer. (it never went beep-beep-beep though) anyway- yes, I see the same thing from a poor connection at the opposite end of the building where the signal is just on the threshold of dropping out (and often does). Yet wavelan reports green+85% signal most of the time. looking in the latest .orig.tar.gz code, I see in vi_linux.c a comment about thanks to a google search and such for the method, but no other citation. I think the authour has applied that wrong. what is used is like (int)rint( log(qual) / log(max) * 100.), but I think the correct calc would be without the two log()s. I've patched the deb-src locally and rebuilt the package and now it matches what /proc/net/wireless and other X-widgets like wicd-gtk report. the signal is yellow/red and at 40% like it should be! I think what happened is that the author is reading the "link" quality metric, which would appear to be a linear ratio (0-100%), but applying a method intended for the "level" quality metric which comes after and is measured in dBm, which is of course a logarithmic scale. but even for dBm to compare the ratio of two values that you'd want to un-log() them first, not re-log() them. so compare the ratio of 10^qual / 10^max. but that's mostly academic as I think we don't even touch the dBm level in the wavelan software. in summary, to fix: remove the log()s, keep the rest. regards, Hamish -- System Information: Debian Release: 6.0 APT prefers stable APT policy: (990, 'stable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/6 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org