Re: NM keeps asking for WPA-PSK password.

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2011-05-06 at 20:30 +0200, Antoni Mont wrote:
> New on that list, sorry if that question was already discussed.
> 
> Problem arises at setting up a netbook Samsung NF310 (network controller 
> BCM 4313 802.11b/g/n) with Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty).
> 
> NM detects my access point (and many others of the neighbourhood) but 
> ask time and again for password, without establishing connection.

That usually means that either the password you gave is invalid, or that
the driver was for some reason unable to connect to the access point.
NM treats inability to connect to the AP as "wrong password" because in
many cases we simply don't know if the failure was password-related or
not.

And the kernel logs say:

May  6 14:03:52 sm1 wpa_supplicant[530]: WPA: 4-Way Handshake failed - pre-shared key may be incorrect

which indicate that is the case.  How many characters long is the PSK,
and what characters does it contain?  According to the standards, the
PSK must be 8 - 63 characters long, and can contain only ASCII
characters (ie, no special characters like Ü or whatever).  If your
passprhase does contain those (some APs are buggy and allow it) then you
may need to use a hexadecimal PSK (64 hex characters) that the AP shows
in it's management interface.

(the problem is that the exact conversion from PSK to hex depends on the
language encoding (iso8859-1, iso8859-15, utf8, etc) that your browser
has set when you enter the PSK if you're allowed to type in non-ascii
characters by the AP's management web page.  After the fact we have no
idea what encoding was used when the PSK was entered, thus we have no
way of knowing how to hash the PSK to hex key if non-ascii characters
were actually used)

Dan

> Have tried with Wicd, with similar results: "bad passowrd" (so, 
> probably, not directly related with NM)
> 
> Also tried substituting STA driver by b43-fwcutter + firmware: no way.
> 
> At command line I get:
> 
> montserrat@sm1:~$ iwconfig wlan0
> wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"FTE-5C8A"
>            Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 
> 94:FE:F4:F9:63:18
>            Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   Tx-Power=19 dBm
>            Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
>            Power Management:off
>            Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-17 dBm
>            Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
>            Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
> 
> As for the file /var/log/syslog, I copy some lines that seems to me 
> significant:
> 
> May  6 14:03:43 sm1 NetworkManager[463]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant 
> connection state:  disconnected -> scanning
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 wpa_supplicant[530]: Trying to associate with 
> 94:fe:f4:f9:63:18 (SSID='FTE-5C8A' freq=2412 MHz)
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 kernel: [ 1579.722485] wlan0: authenticate with 
> 94:fe:f4:f9:63:18 (try 1)
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 kernel: [ 1579.724784] wlan0: authenticated
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 kernel: [ 1579.724907] wlan0: associate with 
> 94:fe:f4:f9:63:18 (try 1)
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 NetworkManager[463]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant 
> connection state:  scanning -> associating
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 kernel: [ 1579.729567] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 
> 94:fe:f4:f9:63:18 (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=3)
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 kernel: [ 1579.729579] wlan0: associated
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 kernel: [ 1579.731487] Associated:	True
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 wpa_supplicant[530]: Associated with 94:fe:f4:f9:63:18
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 NetworkManager[463]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant 
> connection state:  associating -> associated
> May  6 14:03:44 sm1 NetworkManager[463]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant 
> connection state:  associated -> 4-way handshake
> May  6 14:03:52 sm1 kernel: [ 1587.793433] wlan0: deauthenticated from 
> 94:fe:f4:f9:63:18 (Reason: 15)
> May  6 14:03:52 sm1 kernel: [ 1587.794312] Associated:	False
> May  6 14:03:52 sm1 wpa_supplicant[530]: WPA: 4-Way Handshake failed - 
> pre-shared key may be incorrect
> May  6 14:03:52 sm1 wpa_supplicant[530]: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED 
> bssid=94:fe:f4:f9:63:18 reason=0
> May  6 14:03:52 sm1 kernel: [ 1587.798570] cfg80211: All devices are 
> disconnected, going to restore regulatory settings
> May  6 14:03:52 sm1 kernel: [ 1587.798591] cfg80211: Restoring 
> regulatory settings
> May  6 14:03:52 sm1 kernel: [ 1587.798608] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to 
> update world regulatory domain
> May  6 14:03:52 sm1 NetworkManager[463]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant 
> connection state:  4-way handshake -> disconnected
> 
> Thanks in advance for any help
> Toni
> 
> 
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