Re: Mostly off-topic, iwlwifi/WPA broken

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sat, 2008-04-19 at 20:42 -0400, Ryan Novosielski wrote:
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> I'm asking this here because this is a list I subscribe to with
> particularly wireless-knowledgeable folks. Sorry for the noise, but
> someone here hopefully can direct me somewhere better.
> 
> I'm trying to find out how to figure out what is wrong with my wireless
> driver/card. I can't get anywhere with NetworkManager, despite the fact
> that, supposedly, the scan_capa patch was added to my Ubuntu kernel by
> the distro maintainers.
> 
> However, when I start NetworkManager --no-daemon:
> 
> NetworkManager: <info>  wlan0: Device is fully-supported using driver
> 'iwl3945'.
> NetworkManager: <info>  wlan0: driver does not support SSID scans
> (scan_capa 0x00).
> 
> ...which makes me assume that my distro did NOT actually add this patch
> (or it was in there and fell out).

This means that no, your distro has not added the scan patch.

> However, as far as I know, the scan_capa patch doesn't actually fix
> anything that can't be manually worked around with wpa_supplicant, right
> (like ap_scan=1)?

It makes NM able to figure out whether the driver wants ap_scan=1
+scan_ssid=1 or ap_scan=2 when NM configures the supplicant for the
connection.

> Reason I ask, is I can't get my card to connect to a WPA network with
> any settings anymore, even the same exact settings I used for ipw3945,
> and then with every iteration of ap_scan set. Any advice from anyone? As
> Hardy nears release, I want to see what I might do before I'm stuck with
> this.

Can you reproduce the non-connection issue by creating a wpa_supplicant
config file that mirrors the configuration NM is pushing to the
supplicant, and use ap_scan=2?

mac80211 drivers really don't like ap_scan=2 though, so it's unlikely
you'll get too far with that.  You really do need your distro to do the
right thing with the scan_capa patch.

Dan