Some progress with wpa_supplicant/madwifi

Very strange. I installed started the new dev version of
wpa_supplicant when I got home. It got to the stage of AUTHENTICATED,
but I messed up (forgot to pull ethernet network cable), so I aborted
that attempt.

Then it did not work for several more tries,cycling between CONNECTING
and DISCONNECTED etc. Reboot of a laptop did not help.

Then I played with kids, went shopping etc. After about 2 hours, I
started supplicant again and it worked great. I am posting this
message from a wireless laptop.

So... While I am happy about this very moment... How come it was not
connecting, but connected in 2 hours? How can I make it connect when I
want? Maybe it is my AP that is configured for some timeouts?

thanks

i

On Sep 21, 10:43 pm, Ignoramus25943 <ignoramus25...@NOSPAM.
25943.invalid> wrote:
> Very strange. I installed started the new dev version of
> wpa_supplicant when I got home. It got to the stage of AUTHENTICATED,
> ...

You've got a lot of threads on this subject, so I'm not sure what
you've already tried, but...

Can you install network-manager-gnome and nm-applet and let them do
the work? These are Debian package names, so use the ones for your
distribution.

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:25:13 -0700, Nexus7 <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> On Sep 21, 10:43 pm, Ignoramus25943 <ignoramus25...@NOSPAM.
> 25943.invalid> wrote:
>> Very strange. I installed started the new dev version of
>> wpa_supplicant when I got home. It got to the stage of AUTHENTICATED,
>> ...
>
> You've got a lot of threads on this subject, so I'm not sure what
> you've already tried, but...
>
> Can you install network-manager-gnome and nm-applet and let them do
> the work? These are Debian package names, so use the ones for your
> distribution.

Yes, I did, it did not help much and opened four Network Manager icons
on my Gnome desktop, totally useless.

The issue that I narrowed down to, is that sometimes wpa_supplicant
gets authenticated (and then everything works), and sometimes it does
not (and then wifi does not work).

i

Ignoramus11107 <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

>On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:25:13 -0700, Nexus7 <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> On Sep 21, 10:43 pm, Ignoramus25943 <ignoramus25...@NOSPAM.
>> 25943.invalid> wrote:
>>> Very strange. I installed started the new dev version of
>>> wpa_supplicant when I got home. It got to the stage of AUTHENTICATED,
>>> ...
>>
>> You've got a lot of threads on this subject, so I'm not sure what
>> you've already tried, but...
>>
>> Can you install network-manager-gnome and nm-applet and let them do
>> the work? These are Debian package names, so use the ones for your
>> distribution.

>Yes, I did, it did not help much and opened four Network Manager icons
>on my Gnome desktop, totally useless.

>The issue that I narrowed down to, is that sometimes wpa_supplicant
>gets authenticated (and then everything works), and sometimes it does
>not (and then wifi does not work).

Yes. But that is of no help
Make sure that you are telling the system to use the same ESSID each time,
and taht that essid actually identifies the router you want to attach to (
eg there may be 12 "linksys" access points near you and your system is
picking one at random).
Once you are sure that you are trying to connect to the same access point
each time and that it is the correct access point, then look in the logs to
see if you are getting messages from wpa_suppicant. Also make sure that
your router actually has the password you think it has.


>i

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:38:38 GMT, Unruh <unruh-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Ignoramus11107 <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>
>>On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:25:13 -0700, Nexus7 <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>> On Sep 21, 10:43 pm, Ignoramus25943 <ignoramus25...@NOSPAM.
>>> 25943.invalid> wrote:
>>>> Very strange. I installed started the new dev version of
>>>> wpa_supplicant when I got home. It got to the stage of AUTHENTICATED,
>>>> ...
>>>
>>> You've got a lot of threads on this subject, so I'm not sure what
>>> you've already tried, but...
>>>
>>> Can you install network-manager-gnome and nm-applet and let them do
>>> the work? These are Debian package names, so use the ones for your
>>> distribution.
>
>>Yes, I did, it did not help much and opened four Network Manager icons
>>on my Gnome desktop, totally useless.
>
>>The issue that I narrowed down to, is that sometimes wpa_supplicant
>>gets authenticated (and then everything works), and sometimes it does
>>not (and then wifi does not work).
>
> Yes. But that is of no help
> Make sure that you are telling the system to use the same ESSID each time,
> and taht that essid actually identifies the router you want to attach to (
> eg there may be 12 "linksys" access points near you and your system is
> picking one at random).

It is a very good point, but in this case my ESSID is unique. (I love
those linksys essids for war driving)

> Once you are sure that you are trying to connect to the same access
> point each time and that it is the correct access point, then look
> in the logs to see if you are getting messages from
> wpa_suppicant. Also make sure that your router actually has the
> password you think it has.

It does. While I have not been able to do full isolation/elimination
testing, it seems that wpa_supplicant authenticates better (maybe even
every time) if I say "ifconfig eth0 down" prior to starting it. Which
seems weird, since it is great to be able to run a milti-homed
network. But I can live with it.

I am going to try to integrate it better into my "connect to the best
network available" shell script. It is a sort of a poor man's
NetworkManager. But it does exactly what I want, mounts NFS and samba
shares automatically, etc.

i


>
>>i

On Sep 24, 10:18 am, Ignoramus3778 <ignoramus3...@NOSPAM.3778.invalid>
wrote:
> It does. While I have not been able to do full isolation/elimination
> testing, it seems that wpa_supplicant authenticates better (maybe even
> every time) if I say "ifconfig eth0 down" prior to starting it. Which
> seems weird, since it is great to be able to run a milti-homed

Apparently you have your own reasons for not using network-manager and
nm-applet (by purging the packages and reinstalling them), the reasons
for which are somewhere in the threads.

However, what you said above reminds me of something which may be
helpful. In the old days, one used `ifup wlan0` or similar, to bring
up the wireless connection (which in turn used dhcp-client, etc).
Since the days of network-manager and nm-applet, I see wpa_supplicant,
and not dhcp-client, etc. of old. In fact, the interfaces that network-
manager manages must not be in /etc/network/interfaces (where a
network that is to be ifconfig'ed must be specified).

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 03:14:12 -0000, Nexus7 <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> On Sep 24, 10:18 am, Ignoramus3778 <ignoramus3...@NOSPAM.3778.invalid>
> wrote:
>> It does. While I have not been able to do full isolation/elimination
>> testing, it seems that wpa_supplicant authenticates better (maybe even
>> every time) if I say "ifconfig eth0 down" prior to starting it. Which
>> seems weird, since it is great to be able to run a milti-homed
>
> Apparently you have your own reasons for not using network-manager and
> nm-applet (by purging the packages and reinstalling them), the reasons
> for which are somewhere in the threads.

I would love to use it, but it did not run right for me, opened up
four icons on desktop and did not give me much.

> However, what you said above reminds me of something which may be
> helpful. In the old days, one used `ifup wlan0` or similar, to bring
> up the wireless connection (which in turn used dhcp-client, etc).
> Since the days of network-manager and nm-applet, I see wpa_supplicant,
> and not dhcp-client, etc. of old. In fact, the interfaces that network-
> manager manages must not be in /etc/network/interfaces (where a
> network that is to be ifconfig'ed must be specified).

I see. Well, at this point I have a good handle on starting WEP based
wifi with a script, I will just live with that, it is flexible
enough. I will integrate it with my own "connect to best network"
script in a few days.

i