Re: NetworkManager and rt2x00

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 20:59 +0000, Sam Morris wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 15:51:47 -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 20:10 +0000, Sam Morris wrote:
> >> On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 14:46:50 -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> >> > On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 14:19 +0000, Sam Morris wrote:
> >> >> On Mon, 2006-12-04 at 20:29 -0500, Darren Albers wrote: 
> >> >> > While I am not an expert I do see a lot of strange messages and it
> >> >> > doesn't look like the card is even able to associate:
> >> >> > Dec  4 19:04:20 xerces NetworkManager:
> >> >> > <information>^Iwpa_supplicant(2730): wpa_driver_wext_associate
> >> >> > Dec  4 19:04:20 xerces NetworkManager:
> >> >> > <information>^Iwpa_supplicant(2730): Association request to the driver
> >> >> > failed
> >> >> > 
> >> >> > Two questions:
> >> >> > 1) Can you associate by stopping NetworkManager and bringing up
> >> >> > WPA_Supplicant manually?
> >> >> 
> >> >> Yes. I therefore assume that the rt2x00 driver has some idiosyncrasies
> >> >> that prevent the commands that are issued by NM from working.
> >> > 
> >> > Can you post the command that you use to execute wpa_supplicant?
> >> 
> >> Sorry, I misread what you asked above. I meant that I am able to associate
> >> if I avoid NM and wpa_supplicant alltogether and do this:
> >> 
> >>  # ip link set up dev wlan0
> >>  # iwlist wlan0 scan
> >>  # iwconfig wlan0 ssid morris1
> >>  # iwconfig wlan0 key $wep_key
> >>  # iwconfig wlan0 ap 00:30:BD:FD:B7:87
> >> 
> >> I am also able to associate if I tell NM to connect to the network and
> >> then quickly issue just the 'iwconfig ap' command above.
> > 
> > This tells me that the driver has problems finding the correct AP to
> > associate with from its internal scan list and smells like a driver
> > bug...
> 
> Ok... I also posted to the rt2x00 forums. The topic is at
> <http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2586>. One of the
> driver developers said, "The logs indicate that the NM is attempting to
> connect to a device with MAC 00:00:00:00:00 which is quite wrong. This
> also happens with wpa_supplicant so I assume it is a incompatibility
> between wpa_supplicant and dscape stack" (I'm using wpa_supplicant 0.5.6).

NM is never attempting to communicate with 00:00:00:00:00:00 at any
point.  wpa_supplicant is also not attempting to communicate with a
blank BSSID at any point.  Either one may set a  BSSID of all 0s to
_clear_ any previous locked BSSID, but the driver and/or dscape stack
should not be interpreting that as a request to associate with
00:00:00:00:00:00 _at all_.

I'd advocate not using the dscape stack until it gets a bit more mature,
as it's not really in production shape right now, especially with WEXT
support.

Dan