Re: Debugging with Network Manager

[Bill Moseley <moseley hank org>]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 10:45:02AM -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> Nov 23 08:13:33 tiger NetworkManager: <info>  Activation (ath0/wireless): disconnected during association, asking for new key.+
> 
> It looks like the driver is telling wpa_supplicant that it's
> disconnected from the AP during the association.  That is usually
> because the AP disassociated you because your authentication credentials
> are wrong, hence why NM asks for a new key.  How far away are you from
> the AP?  Can you run 'iwevent ath0' during the association and reply
> with what you get?

Well, now I'm 800 miles away, but I was sitting right next to the AP
when trying to connect.

Again, I was authenticating with an iBook using the same credentials
-- and I was sometimes able to connect on this Gutsy laptop, too.  So,
it doesn't seem like the credentials were really wrong.

It's an older Linksys 802.11b only AP, so it's entirely possible that the
problem is related to the AP.

There were other APs in the area, although at much weaker signal.  At
the farthest distance in the house from the AP I did notice another AP
on the same channel so I forced the AP to use a different channel --
but without any improvement.

In the past with my old laptop with a prism based wireless card I had
no problem connecting.  When I upgraded to this thinkpad with Atheros
and Network Manager I was not able to connect to my home AP because
essid was set to not broadcast.  So, when I was at the other location
I was sure that essid was enabled.

Anyway, since there's so many variables involved it would be very
helpful to learn how to debug the individual steps that Network
Manager goes through to connect -- so that maybe I could run those
manually and figure out at what point the connection is failing.

Thanks for the response!

-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley hank org