Re: NetworkManager with hidden ESSID

[Riko Wichmann <Riko Wichmann desy de>]

Hi again,

I wanted to check both at home and at work before answering the questions.

> > I have a problem with NetworkManager at work, where the APs don't 
> > broadcast their ESSID. At home, where I don't hide the ESSID, there is 
> > no problem.

Actually, I was wrong, also my AP at home hides its ESSID ....

> Does the AP show up in the scan list if you do a manual "iwlist ethX
> scan" as root?

It does show up at home (with hidden ESSID as mentioned above).
It does *NOT* show up at work. Only after I configured the network 
entering the ESSID and the WEP key manually, the AP shows up in the 
iwlist scan.

So there is a clear difference between the two locations

> > So, here it goes: I'm running NetworkManager on a Dell D600 and really 
> > like it, especially the dispatcher feature. However, when I'm at work, 
> > the internal wireless network does not show up in the list that the 
> > nm-applet provides. I can connect to it without problem using the 
> > 'Connect to other wireless networks' option. Then it shows in the list. 
> > However, next time I reboot the machine and look into the applet, the 
> > internal network is gone again from the list. It's a WEP encrypted 
> > network, if that makes any difference.
> >
> > in ~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks I find a configuration 
> > for the network, but it never shows up. It kind of defeats the purpose 
> > of NetworkManager, if you need to configure the same network all the 
> > time again.
>
> Does the AP's bssid (looks like a MAC address) show up in the "bssids"
> key in the saved settings for that wireless network?  NM caches the
> BSSID of base stations it's connected to for each wireless network, and
> then reverse-matches those to the BSSIDs it finds in the scan list, and
> that's how it finds hidden SSID access points.  We need to figure out
> which part here is breaking down.

Yes, the bssid is stored in the settings. In fact, since I saw from the 
iwlist scan results, that there are apparently 2 APs for the same 
network, I added the second bssid to the settings manually using 
gconf-editor. But again, after a reboot of the machine, the internal 
network was not available in the network list.

Thanks,

             Riko