Bug 132612

Summary:	Atheros DHCP problem with WPA
Product:	[openSUSE] SUSE LINUX 10.0	Reporter:	Kurt Bennater <curdyben>
Component:	Network	Assignee:	Joachim Gleissner <joachim.gleissner>
Status:	VERIFIED FIXED	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	SuSE Linux 10.0
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---
Attachments:	Output of "rcnetwork status ath0" /var/log/messages with debugging turned on

Description Kurt Bennater 2005-11-07 18:21:55 UTC

YaST detects the Atheros AR 5211 wireless adapter in my notebook, and WLAN works perfectly without or only using WEP encryption. However, with WPA-PSK (operating mode: managed, ESSID: WLAN, encryption key is set correctly, tried passphrase as well as hexcode) it doesn't get an IP address (via DHCP):

# ifup ath0
ath0 device: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5211 802.11ab NIC (rev 01)
ath0 configuration: wlan-id-00:05:4e:41:82:8f
ath0 starting wpa_supplicant
Starting DHCP Client Daemon on ath0... . . . . . no IP address yet... backgrounding.


iwconfig's output is:

# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

ath0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"WLAN"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=0/94 Signal level=-95 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:117 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

eth0 no wireless extensions.

(wpa_supplicant-0.4.4-2 and kernel-default-nongpl-2.6.13-15 are installed.)
Any ideas?

Comment 1 Peter Poeml 2005-11-08 11:24:07 UTC

Joe, what do you think?

Comment 2 Joachim Gleissner 2005-11-08 14:10:40 UTC

Could you run 'rcnetwork status ath0' and attach the output?

Comment 3 Kurt Bennater 2005-11-08 15:45:32 UTC

Created attachment 56691 [details]
Output of "rcnetwork status ath0"

Comment 4 Joachim Gleissner 2005-11-08 16:07:51 UTC

Ok, wpa state is disconnected. Could you set DEBUG="yes" in /etc/sysconfig/network/config, then do a 'rcnetwork restart', wait for a while, and finally attach /var/log/messages?

Comment 5 Kurt Bennater 2005-11-08 23:49:26 UTC

Created attachment 56735 [details]
/var/log/messages with debugging turned on

I restarted the notebook immediately before, this is what you see at the beginning, then (as root) ifup'ed ath0, afterwards restarted the network services and waited for two to three minutes (however, the ath0-start mode is 'manual').

Comment 6 Kurt Bennater 2005-11-14 13:16:52 UTC

Please tell me if you need additional information.

BTW, it seems that I am not the only one having this problem, see e.g.
http://groups.google.de/group/alt.os.linux.suse/browse_thread/thread/6d113e28fae22155/
ac04a28162dcd65d?lnk=st&q=atheros+%22suse+10%22&rnum=1&hl=de#ac04a28162dcd65d

The recommended solution there is to recompile madwifi after correcting a spelling error; this cannot be the solution here (I guess) since the driver is found on my system and the kernel module loads without errors, right?
With SuSE 9.2, it worked out of the box. I would regret to have to choose the other solution proposed in this thread, a downgrade to an older SuSE version.

Comment 7 Kurt Bennater 2005-11-14 16:17:45 UTC

What exactly is a Michael MIC failure? It seems that this is the point where the group handshake fails.

Exactly my problem was observed here:
http://lists.shmoo.com/pipermail/hostap/2005-July/010952.html

Thanks!

Comment 8 Joachim Gleissner 2006-04-05 12:49:17 UTC

Sorry for ignoring this issue that long. Frankly I don't know what a Michael MIC failure is. I guess you are using TKIP, don't you? Could you test whether it works when you configure your access point to use CCMP, if supported?

Comment 9 Kurt Bennater 2006-04-05 21:47:11 UTC

In the meantime, I have tested several recent madwifi and wpa_supplicant versions, all without success - until today. Actually, I am quite happy now, since today's snapshot madwifi-ng-r1491-20060404 works (in combination with wpa_supplicant 0.5.1) well with TKIP!
Perhaps I will test CCMP later, but for me, the main issue is resolved now.