orinoco/prism54 cannot connect to WEP networks

Bug #37396 reported by sam tygier
62
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
network-manager (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Medium
Unassigned
wpasupplicant (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

using network manager i can't connect to a network if it is WEP encrypted. it works ok if i turn WEP off on the acess point, or if i use sys -> admin -> networking to configure it.

i have tested with an apple airport (orinoco) and a netgear wg511 (prism54).

it worked fine about a week ago. with NM 0.5.1

this is on powerpc.

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Kai F. Lahmann (kfl) wrote :

could you try, if installing wpasupplicant solves the problem? (I hope, it exists for ppc..)

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sam tygier (samtygier) wrote :

its installed, version 0.4.8-0ubuntu3

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sonmez (sonmezsahut) wrote :

I couldn't get it to work either. I didn't try using if i use sys -> admin -> networking to configure it, though. i have linksys wireless card (boradcom chipset) and D-link AP. I am using Dapper.

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sam tygier (samtygier) wrote :

two dupes and a comment here, so setting confirmed.

Changed in network-manager:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo) wrote :

I am having problems also using a orinoco_pci (i386).

The card works just fine with WEP in Windows XP. I didn't get a chance to test it with NM 0.5.1.

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Allison Karlitskaya (desrt) wrote :

Either this is an extremely poor bug report or my bug isn't a legit DUP of it at all.

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ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo) wrote :

I can confirm that Network Manager 0.5.1 from flight live cd 5 Just Works with WEP on my PC.

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ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo) wrote :
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j^ (j) wrote :

Christoffer Sørensen:
 this patch is part of ubuntus network manager package,
 it still does not work,

for orinoco_pci cards its possible to use hostap_pci instread (Bug #36708)

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j^ (j) wrote :

forgot Bug #36718 wrt loading the driver.

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foxy123 (foxy) wrote :

i've got the same problem with bcm4306 chip.

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Dean Sas (dsas) wrote :

Same problem with the cvs orinoco_usb driver for a compaq w200 card

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Kaglan (quintessentialk) wrote :

I see what I believe is the same bug on a toshiba satellite 2435 (toshiba card). orinoco driver.

More details: nm-applet loads and appears in menu bar. I can select from the menu my wireless network. I am prompted for the wep key (mine is hexidecimal). I enter it. The icon animates the circling-arrows animation for some period of time, and then stops animating without an error message. No network is actually established.

If I uninstall network-manager, or simply put a fixed configuration in the /etc/network/interfaces file, I can connect to the network successfully.

If I start network-manager manually in no-daemon mode, I get no error during program launch, network selection, or the "typing in the wep key" process.

Then:

ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODE]: Invalid argument
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: Operation not supported

(repeats three times)

ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: Operation not supported
...

I'll try to post an actual log file later.

Revision history for this message
Kristoffer Bergström (kabtoffe) wrote :

Yup my Compaq W200 (orinoco-usb) doesn't connect to my AP with WEP either. Also it doesn't try to open gnome-keyring but it might be related to not being able to connect in the first place.

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F.H. (fheinsen) wrote : Same bug with Ralink RT2500 802.11 PCI Card

Using network-manager, this card fails to connect to wireless access points using WEP encryption; however, the card works fine with WEP when it is setup manually, e.g., by editing /etc/network/interfaces.

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shaggy (slimshaggy) wrote :

Same problem on my IBM laptop with this chip:
Network controller: Intersil Corporation Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)

Manually setting WEP up with iwconfig/ifconfig works, using NM it doesnt.

Revision history for this message
sam tygier (samtygier) wrote :

as i posted at Bug #37120

as a work around install the old network-manager before it started using wpasupplicant

get the network-manager package
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/powerpc/network-manager/0.5.1-0ubuntu19
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/i386/network-manager/0.5.1-0ubuntu19
and nm-applet
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/powerpc/nm-applet/0.5.1-0ubuntu19
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/i386/nm-applet/0.5.1-0ubuntu19

if you get a message about "The NetworkManager applet could not find some required resources. It cannot continue." then run
gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/hicolor/
(see Bug #37128 )
(i had to run it with sudo)

Revision history for this message
Reinhard Tartler (siretart) wrote :

what driver backend do you use for wpasupplicant? If you use wext, changes are good that this is a duplicate of #41480

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Reinhard Tartler (siretart) wrote :

could you please retry with wpasupplicant_0.4.8-3ubuntu1? I think that version should fix this bug, please test it.

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Dean Sas (dsas) wrote :

It doesn't fix it for me (orinoco_usb).

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Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott) wrote :

No particular reason for Critical severity -- this is just one particular driver not working.

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Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott) wrote :

Sounds like this is a wpasupplicant problem? Reinhard, if you can confirm that I'll reject the n-m portion of this bug.

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Reinhard Tartler (siretart) wrote :

it may be a wpasupplicant problem, but I need further information to diagnose it:

What driver backend does prism54 use for WPA? if it is wext, then we have chance.

Could please someone try wpasupplicant without n-m with prism54 and confirm that at least this works?

Revision history for this message
Reinhard Tartler (siretart) wrote :

looking at bug #37458 and the attached log there, it seems that orinoco would not implement WE19 completely, which means that it cannot work with wpasupplicant. Could please somebody confirm this. If yes, then please set to 'confirmed' and reassign to 'linux-source-2.6.15'

Changed in wpasupplicant:
status: Unconfirmed → Needs Info
Revision history for this message
Dean Sas (dsas) wrote : wpa_supplicant orinoco_usb log

I've attached the output from sudo wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -ieth0 -d

I'm not sure how useful it is as I've not done any configuration in /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf because I don't understand what to put inside it for a defined ssid using WEP with the key.

The documentation doesn't seem to tell you how to do this. If someone could explain then I'm willing to test it.

Revision history for this message
sam tygier (samtygier) wrote :

this is still partly a NM bug in that if NM used the old backend instead of wpasuplicant for WEP that would work around the problem.

this only became an issue when NM switched to using wpasuplicant for WEP.

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Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott) wrote :

Not an NM bug, it uses wpasupplicant now

Changed in network-manager:
status: Confirmed → Rejected
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Michael R. Head (burner) wrote :

hmm... bug #42989 had nothing to do with WEP. I don't use it at home and have an open wireless network running off of a dapper server running hostapd.

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Michael R. Head (burner) wrote :

Also, my orinoco_pci-based wireless card connects just fine to the network in question using network-manager.

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ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo) wrote :

Mine (using a IBM T23):

0000:02:02.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)

Doesn't work with NM 0.6.2.
Works with NM 0.5.1.

Revision history for this message
charly4711 (karl-h-beckers) wrote :

can add some info here:

- didn't work ootb for me
- to test wpa_supplicant without nm I configured my /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf according to /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/examples/wep.conf
- then I did wpa_supplicant -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
this returned a number of error messages about hostap functions not being supported. Wasn't aware I was using hostap anymore so checked and both orinoco and hostap modules were loaded, though orinoco was the active interface. Then I tried:
- then I did wpa_supplicant -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -d wext
This dumped some messages (I can no longer find) and eventually started the daemon.
- Trying dhclient timed out
- Then I renamed all orinoco modules in my modules tree and rebooted with network-manager disabled
- iwconfig showed wifi0 and wlan0
- ifconfig wlan0 up
- wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -d hostap
worked without any messages
- dhclient -i wlan0 works
- reboot with network manager enabled and everything works.

So, the workaround is to use the hostap modules (and if anybody knows of a cleaner way to do that than renaming the orinoco drivers, here's an eager audience).

From this I'd deduce that it's either a bug in wpa_supplicant's handling of the wext stuff or smth. in the orinoco driver itself.

HTH, Karl.

Revision history for this message
Michael Waschbüsch (michaelwaschbuesch) wrote :

It seems to be a bug in wpasupplicant because calling wpa_supplicant manually shows the same behavior: With the orinoco_pci driver, wpasupplicant doesn't set the WEP key. Fedora ships with a patch that fixed the problem for me: http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewcvs/devel/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wep-key-fix.patch?rev=1.1&view=log

However, I couldn't get networkmanager running with the hostap_pci driver:
- hostap creates 2 interfaces: eth0 and wifi0
- wpasupplicant works if it is called with "-i wifi0" but not with "-i eth0"
- networkmanager tries to call wpasupplicant for the interface eth0 and not wifi0

Michael

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Joel Parker (jjkp) wrote :

I can confirm this bug on 6.06 using the following modules:

- hermes
- orinoco
- orinoco_cs
- hostap
- hostap_cs

Using miniPCI Dell Truemobile 1150

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ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo) wrote :

Using edgy beta. Installed network-manager after installation and wireless worked just fine.

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ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo) wrote :

Last update to edgy beta broke my wireless so neither NetworkManager nor Gnome networking tools worked.

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Michael R. Head (burner) wrote :

This probably has to do with the prism2 driver being re-enabled. On my T30 with a minipci orinoco card, I was able to get it working by doing this:

$ sudo modprobe -r orinoco_pci
$ sudo modprobe -r hostap_pci
$ sudo modprobe -r prism2_pci
$ sudo modprobe orinoco_pci

Here's the changelog from the kernel I'm referring to:

linux-source-2.6.17 (2.6.17-10.25) edgy; urgency=low

  ...
  * linux-wlan-ng: Update to 0.2.5, and re-enable drivers. prism2 was disabled
    until now because it would not compile on 2.6.17 kernels.
    - Malone #53748
  ...

 -- Ben Collins <email address hidden> Thu, 28 Sep 2006 07:47:26 -0400

Revision history for this message
Reinhard Tartler (siretart) wrote :

Christoffer Sørensen: this is a different issue, please file a new bug on linux-source-2.6.17.

Besides this problem, does wpa_supplicant work for you and can this bug be closed?

Revision history for this message
ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo) wrote :

@Michael R.

Thanks. It worked.

I guess that this bug can be closed.

I've filed a new bug:

https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.17/+bug/63989

Revision history for this message
Reinhard Tartler (siretart) wrote :

closing this bug as per contributors report.

However, I rather think this is/was a kernel issue.

Changed in wpasupplicant:
status: Needs Info → Fix Released
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