Re: NM 0.9.6 not setting up adhoc with static settings

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2013-02-18 at 22:53 -0500, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> On 02/18/2013 10:44 PM, Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Mon, 2013-02-18 at 22:27 -0500, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> > > I have a hard-coded adhoc network setup with a fixed ssid, channel, bssid, and
> > > IPv4 address.  This profile works fine on Ubuntu/Precise (network-manager
> > > v0.9.4.0-0ubuntu4) but fails on Ubuntu/quantal (network-manager
> > > v0.9.6.0-0ubuntu7) .  On 0.9.6, it says its setting all those settings, but
> > > then actually tries on channel 1 instead, and it dynamically generates a BSSID
> > > rather than using the one in the config file that it said it was going to
> > > load. Attached is the NM connection file and the log from syslog.
> >
> > So check your system logs
> > (/var/log/messages, /var/log/NetworkManager, /var/log/daemon.log, etc)
> > and see what NM is sending to the supplicant.  You'll see something like
> > this:
> >
> > Config: added 'SSID' value 'foobar'
>
> The log was attached, but here's the relevant snippet:
>
> Config: added 'ssid' value 'commotionwireless.net'
> Config: added 'mode' value '1'
> Config: added 'frequency' value '2432'
> Config: added 'bssid' value '02:ca:ff:ee:ba:be'
>
>
> > That'll tell you whether the problem is NM or the supplicant/kernel.
> > You should see both the channel you gave NM, the SSID, the BSSID, and
> > "mode 2" being sent to the supplicant.  You may not know, but the
> > supplicant and kernel drivers have great leeway in doing what they want
> > with BSSID.  Also beware that some newer drivers simply don't support
> > AdHoc mode (bcma for newer Broadcom cards, newest Intel devices).
>
>
> Yeah, it seems to be a driver/wifi issue, I've been wrestling with iwconfig as
> well, and failing.  Its so lame that they don't support adhoc...
>
> The driver is called 'wl' and is a binary blob.  It was also complaining in dmesg:
>
> [91534.974363] ERROR @wl_cfg80211_scan : WLC_SCAN error (-22)
> [93584.080241] ERROR @wl_notify_scan_status : eth0 Scan_results error (-22)
> [94402.076204] ERROR @wl_notify_scan_status : eth0 Scan_results error (-22)
> [95361.265390] ERROR @wl_cfg80211_scan : WLC_SCAN error (-22)
> [95994.270295] ERROR @wl_cfg80211_join_ibss : Invalid bssid
> [96015.656825] IPv4 over IPv4 tunneling driver
> [96020.714712] device eth0 entered promiscuous mode
> [96248.035028] ERROR @wl_cfg80211_join_ibss : Invalid bssid
>
> Guess I'll just write that little old netbook for this stuff.  Any ideas how
> common this situation is?

Haha.  Ok, good luck with wl.o :)  Since it's binary and proprietary,
there's not much we can do with it, nor can any of the bugs be fixed.
You could see if b43 works for your card.  If not, you're stuck with
either wl.o or bmca, and we already know bcma doesn't support AdHoc.  So
you may need to get another wifi card...

Dan