WPA2 Issues in Ubuntu Karmic 9.10

Dan Williams dcbw at redhat.com
Fri Nov 20 18:10:23 EST 2009


On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 16:46 -0500, Bryan Moore wrote:
> I've already ruled-out the AP because I have several other computers
> running on it with no issues, from straight Debian to MintLinux to
> Ubuntu to Windows XP and varying many different kernels.
> My only problem occurs in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic.
> 
> 
> What's the first step for debugging the stack?

You can either file a launchpad bug with this information and hope
upstream Ubuntu devs look at the issue, or you can:

1) downloading the source deb for your current kernel
2) rebuild that package
3) install kernel header packages
4) jump into the package's source tree and start stuffing some printks
into it

Basically, once you have the exact same sources as the kernel you're
running, you don't need to actually rebuild the entire kernel.  You can
rebuild specific modules to test out your changes, and keep running the
kernel you're currently running, but just test out the modules you want
to change.

For example, if you want to test something in mac80211, you jump into
the kernel module sources for mac82011:

cd net/mac80211
<make your change>
make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build SUBDIRS=`pwd` modules

and that will make a new mac80211.ko, which you can then use with
"modprobe" to start running and test the changes.

Let me know if that's of interest to you.

Dan

> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Dan Williams <dcbw at redhat.com> wrote:
>         On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 14:37 -0500, Bryan Moore wrote:
>         > I think that's where my problem is a little different, since
>         I use
>         > neither network-manager nor wicd.
>         
>         
>         Then that points to either an AP issue or a driver issue.  I'd
>         first
>         suspect the driver, but consumer-level APs are often pieces of
>         junk that
>         sometimes randomly fail as well.
>         
>         First try to reboot the AP.  If that doesn't help, then try to
>         downgrade
>         your kernel if you still have an older one installed.  That
>         can help
>         isolate driver issues.
>         
>         After that, well, you have to jump into debugging the kernel
>         wireless
>         stack, which isn't really that bad.
>         
>         Dan
>         
>         
>         > On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Dan Williams
>         <dcbw at redhat.com> wrote:
>         >         On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 05:25 -0500, Bryan Moore
>         wrote:
>         >         > Thanks... I figured that was going to be the
>         answer, but was
>         >         hoping
>         >         > someone would just write-back "oh, it's this..."
>         >         > :-(
>         >
>         >
>         >         It's almost never that simple :)
>         >
>         >         > Here's one I started in UbuntuForums, here's my
>         Launchpad
>         >         bug, here's
>         >         > one of the others, and I've attached some of
>         command outputs
>         >         specific
>         >         > to my system.
>         >
>         >
>         >         The Syslog.txt in that first Launchpad bug shows a
>         lot of:
>         >
>         >         Jul 18 17:17:28 molly kernel: [25847.724098] wlan0:
>         no probe
>         >         response from AP 00:13:d3:81:ac:d6 - disassociating
>         >
>         >         It looks from that bug report that NM is working
>         correctly,
>         >         but often
>         >         the driver simply disconnects you because the AP is
>         not
>         >         responding to
>         >         probe requests, or the driver has a bug which causes
>         it to
>         >         miss the
>         >         probe responses.
>         >
>         >         Dan
>         >
>         >
>         >         > Thanks, again.
>         >         >
>         >         >
>         >         > On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 6:12 PM, Jouni Malinen
>         <j at w1.fi>
>         >         wrote:
>         >         >
>         >         >         On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 02:52:13PM -0500,
>         Bryan
>         >         Moore wrote:
>         >         >         > There are *many* questions regarding
>         some basic
>         >         networking
>         >         >         problems in
>         >         >         > Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 and the forum
>         >         >         (http://www.ubuntuforum.org/)
>         >         >         > provided me little direction in this
>         single case,
>         >         so I
>         >         >         thought I'd go to the
>         >         >         > source.
>         >         >         >
>         >         >         > It would *seem* there is a problem with
>         >         wpa_supplicant in
>         >         >         Ubuntu right now;
>         >         >         > some, me being one, are having *serious
>         >         *networking issues
>         >         >         when using WPA2.
>         >         >         > There are some threads discussing it and
>         a bug has
>         >         been
>         >         >         filed in Launchpad,
>         >         >         > but most focus on a Network-Manager
>         issue rather
>         >         than
>         >         >         wpa_supplicant. Some
>         >         >         > have also reported the issue either
>         greatly
>         >         diminishes or
>         >         >         disappears
>         >         >         > completely when switching from WPA2 to
>         WPA.
>         >         >         >
>         >         >         > Could you advise me where to begin my
>         little
>         >         investigation?
>         >         >
>         >         >
>         >         >         You could start by providing some more
>         details of
>         >         the issue or
>         >         >         a pointer
>         >         >         to such description (like a full URL to a
>         thread
>         >         discussing
>         >         >         this or a
>         >         >         specific bug in Launchpad). As far as this
>         mailing
>         >         list is
>         >         >         concerned,
>         >         >         getting a verbose debug log from
>         wpa_supplicant
>         >         (both success
>         >         >         and
>         >         >         failure case) and description of which
>         driver you
>         >         are using
>         >         >         would also
>         >         >         be quite helpful.
>         >         >
>         >         >         --
>         >         >         Jouni Malinen
>         >              PGP
>         >         >         id EFC895FA
>         >         >
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