Re: Cannot connect to wireless connection.

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2012-09-21 at 10:43 +0530, Abhijeet R wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I sometimes cannot connect to the wireless and the errors in 
> /var/log/messages are like this.
> 
> Sep 21 10:29:31 archlinux kernel: [ 1822.000013] cfg80211: Calling CRDA 
> to update world regulatory domain
> Sep 21 10:29:31 archlinux NetworkManager[552]: <info> (wlan0): 
> supplicant interface state: associated -> disconnected
> Sep 21 10:29:31 archlinux NetworkManager[552]: <info> (wlan0): 
> supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning
> Sep 21 10:29:31 archlinux NetworkManager[552]: <info> (wlan0): 
> supplicant interface state: scanning -> authenticating
> Sep 21 10:29:31 archlinux NetworkManager[552]: <info> (wlan0): 
> supplicant interface state: authenticating -> associating
> Sep 21 10:29:31 archlinux NetworkManager[552]: <info> (wlan0): 
> supplicant interface state: associating -> associated
> Sep 21 10:29:31 archlinux kernel: [ 1822.183598] cfg80211: Calling CRDA 
> to update world regulatory domain
> Sep 21 10:29:31 archlinux NetworkManager[552]: <info> (wlan0): 
> supplicant interface state: associated -> disconnected
> Sep 21 10:29:31 archlinux NetworkManager[552]: <info> (wlan0): 
> supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning
> Sep 21 10:29:34 archlinux NetworkManager[552]: <info> (wlan0): 
> supplicant interface state: scanning -> authenticating
> Sep 21 10:29:34 archlinux NetworkManager[552]: <info> (wlan0): 
> supplicant interface state: authenticating -> associating
> Sep 21 10:29:34 archlinux kernel: [ 1825.778086] cfg80211: Calling CRDA 
> for country: IN
> 
> And the above error keeps repeating for like forever and the dialog to 
> enter username & password keeps appearing every 15 seconds or so. When 
> this happens, I even tried switching on/off the hardware switch and also 
> unloaded & reloaded the wifi driver, but still got the same errors. It's 
> only after the restart that I was able to connect to the Wifi.

The supplicant is failing to connect to the AP using the credentials
you've provided.  That means that either (a) there are some driver bugs,
(b) the network doesn't like you for some reason, or (c) the
password/credentials are wrong.  NM could do a better job of figuring
this out, and in fact I just fixed that up for the next version.

If you'd like to narrow this down even further, we need detailed
supplicant debug logs:

1) mv /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant /
2) killall -TERM wpa_supplicant
3) /wpa_supplicant -dddtu
4) reproduce the issue, and then grab the spew from wpa_supplicant and
mail it to me (or if you're comfortable with your APs addressing being
public, to the list)

To get things back to normal:

1) ctrl+c in the supplicant terminal window
2) mv /wpa_supplicant /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant
3) and it should start working again; NM autostarts the supplicant

(I should really figure out why the dbus-based log level change methods
don't actually output correct log info, at least not for me...)

Dan

Dan