Re: Debugging WPA auth issues

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2009-02-13 at 15:59 -0800, Bill Moseley wrote:
> I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 with Atheros ath9k driver on a Thinkpad T60p.
> 
> Sorry for the mundane question, but I'm visiting family and they have
> an older Linksys Wireless-B router (AP).
> 
> 
> The AP has WPA Pre-Shared Key with TKIP (other options are  WPA
> RADIUS, RADIUS, and WEP option).
> 
> When I enable WPA Pre-Shared and enter a key like 1212121212 then
> nm-applet just keeps asking form my pass phrase.  I've tried a few
> other pass phrases, just for fun.
> 
> If I disable wireless security on the router I can easily connect
> (nm-applet ends up showing the ssid twice, once with security and once
> without).

So to debug this further, you need to add "-dddt" to the end of the
Exec= line
in /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant.service, then "killall -TERM wpa_supplicant", then try the connection again and wait until it asks for a password.

Then, grab /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log and we can take a look at what
went wrong.  From the NM logs, it simply looks like the supplicant
cannot connect with the information it's been given, which could be
config or driver issues.  The supplicant never gets into the 4-Way WPA
handshake phase, which could mean that it never receives the EAPOL
frames from the AP to kick off the actual WPA authentication.

If your password was wrong, you'd be kicked off later, likely in state 5
(4way_handshake), not state 4 (associated).

Dan