Bug 148354

Summary:	iwscan on Prism2 PC-Card does not show hidden cells
Product:	[openSUSE] SUSE Linux 10.1	Reporter:	Timo Hoenig <thoenig>
Component:	Network	Assignee:	Joachim Gleissner <joachim.gleissner>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	Beta 3
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Timo Hoenig 2006-02-06 11:24:23 UTC

NM does not show hidden, un-encrypted networks for which it received information from nm-applet or KNM.

Hidden, encrypted networks are found once NM got details from the applets.

Comment 1 Timo Hoenig 2006-02-06 16:13:57 UTC

Seems to be hardware-specific.

It is a Prism2 PC-Card (Linksys, Instant Wireless Network PC Card) using hostap as driver.

Some debug info:

- pccarcctl eject & insert: iwlist doesn't show anything
- once NM is running: iwlist shows broadcasting networks (due to a scan issued by NM?).  All hidden cells are _not_ shown.
- once I've connected to _one_ hidden network manually: iwlist shows _all_ hidden cells

Joe, does this ring a bell for you?  Driver issue?

Comment 2 Joachim Gleissner 2006-02-09 16:24:12 UTC

> - pccarcctl eject & insert: iwlist doesn't show anything
Probably due to the interface being down.

> - once NM is running: iwlist shows broadcasting networks (due to a scan issued by NM?).  All hidden cells are _not_ shown.
> - once I've connected to _one_ hidden network manually: iwlist shows _all_ hidden cells
Yes, I can reproduce this. But it doesn't suffice to connect to a hidden wlan to get the list of hidden APs. You need to use wpa_supplicant to get that effect. I think it is caused by a different kind of scanning wpa_supplicant performs compared to iwlist. However, is it important for NetworkManager to get that list? I guess NetworkManager uses it to detect already known hidden WLANs?

Comment 3 Robert Love 2006-02-13 15:58:38 UTC

Comment #2: Correct.  NM takes the list of non-broadcast AP's and finds BSSID's that the user has connected to in the past.  It then shows them in the scan list.

Comment 4 Joachim Gleissner 2006-03-23 12:57:22 UTC

It seems using the orinoco driver it's even worse, it does never show hidden cells, regardless whether it is associated to a hidden one or not. I'm still investigating that, but it may be possible that this is an firmware issue and can't be fixed in the driver.

Comment 5 Timo Hoenig 2006-03-28 13:17:01 UTC

Assigning to the one who knows :-)

Changing severity to normal.

Comment 6 Joachim Gleissner 2006-04-24 16:53:37 UTC

I seems the Prism2 firmware does behave like that. I tried also a newer firmware version, but it does not help either. I fear we have to live with it.