Re: Problems connecting to public WiFi with latest 80211 code

Kevin Oberman wrote:
>> Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:22:25 -0700
>> From: Sam Leffler <sam_at_errno.com>
>>
>> Kevin Oberman wrote:
>>> I had not seen this problem because I do not use the wpa_supplicant to
>>> connect to open networks when at home, but I am on travel this week and
>>> it has been a real pain.
>>>
>>> System is current as of this afternoon and is running on a ThinkPad T43
>>> with an Atheros 5212 mini-PCI card.
>> mac+phy revs for card are always important; dmesg|grep ath
>>
>>> When the system comes up, the wpa_supplicant starts, but the system
>>> never scans except with 'authmode WPA1+WPA2/802.11i privacy ON' and
>>> never tries to associate with an open AP even though I have an entry in
>>> wpa_supplicant.conf for that network. I have to issue a 'ifconfig
>>> wepmode off' to get it to associate.
>> I don't see a log from wpa_supplicant or console debug msgs as obtained
>> with wlandebug.
>>
>>> Even then, it still won't always associate until I ifconfig the
>>> interface down and up. Once I do this, it seems to associate rather
>>> quickly. 
>>>
>>> I suspect that the problem reported on mobile by Matthias Apitz and jhb
>>> may be a part of the problem, but I think the inability to get to
>>> authmode OPEN is different.
>>>
>>> I use the supplicant at home and it works fine, but that is NOT an open
>>> network, so I don't need the interface to run in OPEN mode.
>>>
>>> Any idea what is going on and if it can be fixed or worked around?
>> I can't help w/o the usual info: what os, card info (mac+phy), and how
>> to reproduce (e.g. wpa_supplicant.conf and cmd line).
> 
> Sorry, this was a really bad report.
> 
> Here is the dmesg part:
> ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
> ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0xb4000000-0xb400ffff irq 11 at device 2.0 on pci11
> ath0: [ITHREAD]
> ath0: using obsoleted if_watchdog interface
> ath0: Ethernet address: 00:14:a4:60:f2:e3
> ath0: mac 5.9 phy 4.3 radio 3.6
> 
> Do the following:
> Boot up a current kernel WITHOUT 'device ath'
> kldload if_ath
> Interface continues to report 'authmode WPA1+WPA2/802.11i privacy ON'
> and never associates.
> /etc/rc.d/wpa_supplicant restart ath0
> 
> This fixes it all. I didn't realize that restarting wpa_supplicant
> corrected the problem when I sent the initial message.
> 
> Because of the way this is working, I failed to get anything from
> 'wpa_supplicant -d' as any attempt to re-start the supplicant cause
> things to work.
> 
> I did run wlandebug and I am attaching the output. The supplicant was
> restarted at the point where the DHCP client exited.
> 
> I see the same behavior when I 'boot -s', 'kldload if_ath' and 'exit'.
> 
> Due to an IRQ issue that I have not had time to try to track down, I
> can't load it from the loader and I don't want it in my kernel fro a
> variety of reasons.
> 
> I might also mention that I am also seeing frequent drops in
> associations that are working fine, but this has been reported by
> others and so this is just a "me, too". But is annoying. I lost it
> twice entering this message.
> 

It appears wpa_supplicant is in control of selecting an ap but there's 
no log from it to indicate why it had troubles.  The output of wlandebug 
scan shows the ap you finally associated to (00:14:6a:07:b9:00) appear 
in every scan result and with a strong rssi so whatever is going on 
looks to be in wpa_supplicant.

I didn't understand the comment about loading the module not doing 
anything.  If the authmode was switched from OPEN to WPA then 
wpa_supplicant started and if it started then it should have kicked off 
a scan.  I suspect you need to collect a log from it to get any further.

I'd suggest not launching wpa_supplicant on module load.  Then run it by 
hand and capture a log.

	Sam