Re: Does anyone understand NetworkManager?

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2006-08-14 at 10:41 -0400, David Abrahams wrote:
> "Darren Albers" <dalbers gmail com> writes:
> 
> > On 8/14/06, David Abrahams <dave boost-consulting com> wrote:
> > <snip>
> >> How do wireless connection problems with network
> >> manager/wpa_supplicant get solved?  Do they get solved, or do people
> >> just give up?  Really, this is not meant to be a rant; I do deeply
> >> appreciate that people work on and support this stuff for free.
> >
> > I guess I should add a "How to get help section to the FAQ" listing
> > all the information someone might need to debug the connection.  Part
> > of the problem is that many of the issues have been resolved and the
> > fixes just not backported to the various distributions and many of the
> > people who frequent this list are taking breaks at the end of the
> > summer.
> >
> > When I saw your post I read the logs but didn't see anything that
> > would indicate a problem.  I vaguely remember some issues with hidden
> > SSID's that were fixed in 0.6.3 that the Ubuntu maintainer may not
> > have backported.  
> 
> Are we talking about wpa_supplicant, NetworkManager, both, or
> something else?  I'm happy to build/install the latest of whatever it
> is I need.
> 
> > Can you try broadcasting your SSID and see if it
> > works?
> 
> OK, when I get back home I'll try that.
> 
> > What type of card are you using?  
> 
> IBM T60p laptop builtin wireless.  I'm not sure who manufactures that
> part of the circuit, but it's a Centrino Duo so probably Intel.

Likely an ipw2200, ipw2915, or ipw3945, right?  Do an 'lsmod | grep ipw'
from a terminal and let us know what you find.

> > I have seen a similar problem with an Atheros (Madwifi) card I have.
> > I resolved it by building the latest madwifi drivers by hand (Which
> > then required me to build the newer version of Network Manager).  If
> > the problem is just that 0.6.2 can't reliably connect to hidden
> > networks then broadcasting your SSID would be an easier fix.  
> 
> Lots of networks in the neighborhood and I thought it would add
> security.  
> 
> > Not broadcasting your SSID is not more of a hindrance than a
> > security measure anyway...
> 
> Can you explain why?  Even with hiding I recently saw an unexpected
> DHCP client name, which may have been nothing, but it is why I
> switched from WEP to WPA.  So if it _was_ someone on our network, I
> guess hiding didn't stop them.

Hiding your SSID does not increase your security in any real way.  What
it _does_ do is stop casual connection attempts, since casual users
cannot find your SSID from a scan, and therefore it will not show up
right away in NetworkManager, Airport, or Windows.

Anyone with a few smarts and a sniffer can figure out your SSID,
actually, since you have to broadcast it you connect to your AP.  The
only thing hiding the SSID on the AP does is not have the AP broadcast
the SSID to everyone 10 times a second.  That doesn't mean it never
travels over the air though.

> >> I am using Ubuntu Dapper, on which there is seemingly no
> >> wpa_supplicant.conf, which makes it pretty hard to relate any
> >> documentation I read to actual diagnosis on my machine.
> >
> > No need to post that, that is only needed if you are using some
> > unusual EAP combination.
> 
> Yes, but I would like to understand how my software works and how to
> control it.  When all the docs tell me to do this or that to my
> configuration file and I can't find it, I am left rather at sea.

If you stop NetworkManager, you can use the Ubuntu FAQ on wpa_supplicant
to try a manual configuration.  If that works, and is consistently
reliable for you, please send the wpa_supplicant.conf file to this list
so we can further debug the issue.

Dan