Bug#969897: wireless-regdb: Document differences between debian and upstream regulatory.db

[MichaIng]

Package: wireless-regdb
Version: 2022.04.08-2~deb11u1

I just faced the same cfg80211 error, trying to switch from CRDA to the 
kernel builtin feature. It took me a while to find this bug report and 
about the need to switch to the upstream version of the database. Thanks 
for the pointer, and my fault to not read the README.


Would be great if the difference and reasons behind the Debian version 
of the database could be explained, as it seems to make things 
complicated and breaks using the WiFi adapter properly OOTB, especially 
in AP mode, when not using a Debian kernel. The kernel may not even have 
support for CRDA enabled, as it is usually seen deprecated or at least 
redundant.


Best regards,

Micha

Bug#969897: wireless-regdb: Document differences between debian and upstream regulatory.db

[Kevin Locke]

Package: wireless-regdb
Version: 2020.04.29-2
Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainer,

I recently encountered the error

cfg80211: loaded regulatory.db is malformed or signature is missing/invalid

when booting kernel 5.8.7 without Debian patches.  Based on
/usr/share/doc/wireless-regdb/README.Debian I understand that this is
expected and I need to switch the regulatory.db alternative.  This all
works well, thanks.

However, I don't understand the implications of this change.  How does
the Debian version differ from the upstream version, if at all?  They
appear to be binary identical on my system, and that this is enforced by
the build scripts.  Is the difference only the signing keys?  Presumably
there is good reason for this divergence.  Would it be possible to
document the differences and motivation in README.Debian and/or
regulatory.db(5) to help users like myself understand?

Thanks,
Kevin


-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers testing-debug
  APT policy: (990, 'testing-debug'), (990, 'testing'), (500, 
'unstable-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (101, 'experimental'), (1, 
'experimental-debug')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.8.7 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

wireless-regdb depends on no packages.

wireless-regdb recommends no packages.

Versions of packages wireless-regdb suggests:
ii  crda  4.14+git20191112.9856751-1

-- no debconf information