WPA / wpa_supplicant problems on Ubuntu

[pr0fess0r]

Hi all
I'm running Ubuntu 5.10. My XH8196 802.11g PCI wireless card (Dick Smith Electronics, New Zealand) shows up as Intersil ISL3890 [Prism GT/Prism] and as eth1 in the Network Config. I used ndiswrapper and installed the Windows driver no problem, but I cant get wpa_supplicant to work with the card.

This is the info about my card:

sudo lshw -C network
*-network:0
description: Wireless interface
product: Intersil ISL3890 [Prism GT/Prism Duette]
vendor: Intersil Corporation
physical id: 9
bus info: pci@00:09.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: 00:30:b4:00:00:00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=prism54 multicast=yes wireless=NOT RE ADY!
resources: iomemory:b6000000-b6001fff irq:19

I guess it's not ready because we have WPA PSK security on our wlan, so I'm leaving the driver as is and working through the Ubuntu wiki WPA guide:

wpa_supplicant.conf looks like this:

# Minimal /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf to associate with open
# access points. Please see
# /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf.gz for more complete
# configuration parameters.

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=0

eapol_version=1
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1

### Associate with any open access point
### Scans/ESSID changes can be done with wpa_cli
network={
ssid="(MYNETWORK)"
scan_ssid=1
proto=WPA
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk=(my PSK)
}

Running wpa_supplicant -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dprism54 gives me:

ioctl[SIOCSIWPMKSA]: Operation not permitted
ioctl[SIOCSIWMODE]: Operation not permitted
Could not configure driver to use managed mode
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Permission denied
Could not set interface 'eth1' UP
socket(PF_PACKET): Operation not permitted
ioctl[PRISM54_HOSTAPD]: Operation not permitted
ioctl[PRISM54_HOSTAPD]: Operation not permitted
wpa_driver_prism54_set_countermeasures - not yet implemented
ioctl[SIOCSIWAP]: Operation not permitted
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Permission denied

which is where I'm stuck. I did install ndiswrapper and the XP driver for the card but I'm not sure whether to stick with the default prism driver or use ndiswrapper:
ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
o4i01a driver present, hardware present

So... any tips on where to proceed from here would be greatly appreciated
cheers

[Roxoff]

As you have ndiswrapper installed, you can give it a go, see if you get a different response (i.e if the problem lies with your connection or whether it's driver related).

While you're configuring wpa_supplicant, make sure you run it from the command line at first and use something like this:

wpa_supplicant -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dprism54 -dd

which will add debug output/tracing from the running app, so you'll have a better idea about what is going on.

[pr0fess0r]

Hi, thanks for the advice. Here's the out put:

wpa_supplicant -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dprism54 -dd
Initializing interface 'eth1' conf '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf' driver 'prism54'
Configuration file '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf' -> '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf'
Reading configuration file '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf'
ctrl_interface='/var/run/wpa_supplicant'
ctrl_interface_group=0
eapol_version=1
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1
Line: 15 - start of a new network block
ssid - hexdump_ascii(len=9):
XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXX
scan_ssid=1 (0x1)
proto: 0x1
key_mgmt: 0x2
PSK - hexdump(len=32): [REMOVED]
Priority group 0
id=0 ssid='XXXXXXXXXX'
Initializing interface (2) 'eth1'
EAPOL: SUPP_PAE entering state DISCONNECTED
EAPOL: KEY_RX entering state NO_KEY_RECEIVE
EAPOL: SUPP_BE entering state INITIALIZE
EAP: EAP entering state DISABLED
EAPOL: External notification - portEnabled=0
EAPOL: External notification - portValid=0
ioctl[SIOCSIWPMKSA]: Operation not permitted
ioctl[SIOCSIWMODE]: Operation not permitted
Could not configure driver to use managed mode
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Permission denied
Could not set interface 'eth1' UP
SIOCGIWRANGE: too old (short) data - assuming WPA is not supported
socket(PF_PACKET): Operation not permitted
ioctl[PRISM54_HOSTAPD]: Operation not permitted
ioctl[PRISM54_HOSTAPD]: Operation not permitted
wpa_driver_prism54_set_countermeasures - not yet implemented
ioctl[SIOCSIWAP]: Operation not permitted
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Permission denied

I'm not sure what it means though...
cheers

[Roxoff]

...
ioctl[SIOCSIWPMKSA]: Operation not permitted
ioctl[SIOCSIWMODE]: Operation not permitted
Could not configure driver to use managed mode
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Permission denied
Could not set interface 'eth1' UP
...

This bit is the error, I'm not sure what it's saying though. Looks on the face of it like your driver isn't working right. Have you got the right driver for your card? Are you running this through ndiswrapper? If you are, could you try a different windows driver for your chipset? I must admit, I'm pretty much at a loss here; maybe others could help, too?

[TimMadDammit]

I've got the exact same problem but with ubuntu 6.06, a linksys card, and using ndiswrapper as the driver. I'd post the exact output, but that computer's not on the internet, which makes it difficult. Suffice it to say that it's almost identical.

Did anyone ever come up with a solution to this?

[sehvral]

Could be a bit of a long shot, but you are running the command as root (or sudo'ing it), right? I seem to remember hearing somewhere that these messages could be caused by that.

[TimMadDammit]

Yeah, i'm sudoing it. But i did notice something I hadn't seen before that looks to be the source of the problem. There's an error in there that says "WPA not supported by driver"

That could pose a problem. But it's odd, because the box says that the card supports both WPA and WPA2. So time for some research I guess.