Gentoo, WPA and NetworkManager

[avend]

Hey everyone, new to the forums but not to linux. I have recently gotten my wireless up and running (Dell 1450 wireless in a 600m) through ndiswrapper. I've also gotten wpa_supplicant working and I can connect no problems to my WPA-TKIP router. I'm new to dbus and NetworkManager though, and I've had some problems getting them to set up with my card/driver.

I'm not sure what config files are relevant, as my hardware and the drivers and everything are detected and working properly, but when I try to use the nm_applet distributed with NetworkManager, I can never get a complete connection to my WPA connection. I haven't tried it to other types of networks. Here's a relevant snippet from /var/log/messages:

Jul  8 14:08:02 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0) New wireless user key for network 'dbag' received.
Jul  8 14:08:02 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled...
Jul  8 14:08:02 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started...
Jul  8 14:08:02 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) scheduled...
Jul  8 14:08:02 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete.
Jul  8 14:08:02 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) starting...
Jul  8 14:08:02 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0/wireless): access point 'dbag' is encrypted, and a key exists.  No new key needed.
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <information>     SUP: sending command 'INTERFACE_ADD wlan0               ndiswrapper    /var/run/wpa_supplicant '
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <information>     SUP: response was 'OK'
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <information>     SUP: sending command 'AP_SCAN 1'
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <information>     SUP: response was 'UNKNOWN COMMAND'
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <WARNING>  nm_utils_supplicant_request_with_check (): supplicant_send_network_config: supplicant error for 'AP_SCAN 1'.  Response: 'UNKNOWN COMMAND'
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <WARNING>  real_act_stage2_config (): Activation (wlan0/wireless): couldn't send wireless configuration to the supplicant.
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0) failure scheduled...
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) complete.
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0) failed for access point (dbag)
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Activation (wlan0) failed.
Jul  8 14:08:03 avend NetworkManager: <information>     Deactivating device wlan0.

Yeah yeah, I know the AP is called dbag, I thought it was funny. Anyways, obviously my wireless interface is called 'wlan0', and it appears that the problem is between wpa_supplicant and NetworkManager. Although, it looks like that UNKNOWN_COMMAND might be from ndiswrapper's response to wpa_supplicant.

I couldn't find a good forum for wpa_supplicant support, so if you know somewhere more appropriate for this question, I'd be thankful to know.

[antidrugue]

Make sure you are using latest version of network-manager, as well as latest version of your wireless driver.

WPA didn't work for me with network-manager until I used network-manager > 0.6, and latest ipw2200 > 1.1.0.

[avend]

* net-misc/networkmanager
Latest version available: 0.6.3
Latest version installed: 0.6.3
Size of files: 781 kB
Homepage: http://people.redhat.com/dcbw/NetworkManager/
Description: Network configuration and management in an easy way. Desktop env independent
License: GPL-2

* net-wireless/ndiswrapper
Latest version available: 1.2-r1
Latest version installed: 1.2-r1
Size of files: 146 kB
Homepage: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
Description: Wrapper for using Windows drivers for some wireless cards
License: GPL-2

* net-wireless/wpa_supplicant
Latest version available: 0.4.9
Latest version installed: 0.4.9
Size of files: 471 kB
Homepage: http://hostap.epitest.fi/wpa_supplicant/
Description: IEEE 802.1X/WPA supplicant for secure wireless transfers
License: || ( GPL-2 BSD )


The NetworkManager ebuild was pulled from a 3rd party website.

I don't use IPW2200 because my wireless card is broadcom based (It's the Dell 1450 802.11a/b/g mini-pci card, BCM4309 rev 03). I have been using the windows binary drivers along with ndiswrapper. I havent read anything posted by someone with a simliar set up trying to get NetworkManager and wpa_supplicantto work.

The wireless driver is the one linked to from the installation wiki found on ndiswrapper's page.

[antidrugue]

I don't use IPW2200 because my wireless card is broadcom based (It's the Dell 1450 802.11a/b/g mini-pci card, BCM4309 rev 03).

Of course, use your own appropriate driver, from Dell.

I had no problem configuring network-manager with a card using the same chipset as yours on Ubuntu 6.06. So I guess it should be doable for you to.

I guess you have to make sure you enable wpa support in network-manager (that's Gentoo, so I guess you compile from source), and so on.

[avend]

So you are using ndiswrapper and the dell windows binary drivers as well? Can you maybe post a snippet from the wpa_supplicant.conf? I've read elsewhere that changing one line from 'ap_scan=1' to 'ap_scan=2' would help, but i've just been getting timed out with no error messages using wpa_supplicant when attempting to do that with my AP.

I still don't know a lot about all the config options for wpa_supplicant or ndiswrapper, that might help some I guess.

[antidrugue]

Can you maybe post a snippet from the wpa_supplicant.conf?

No wpa_supplicant.conf at all. Just the default /etc/default/wpasupplicant (will be in another location in Gentoo) file. In fact, I don't change anything to the default wpasupplicant configuration. I didn't had to bother with wpa_supplicant nor network-manager. Just installing the ndiswrapper package, loading the driver and associating the ndiswrapper module to "wlan0". Then, in Debian, setting the proper groups in /etc/group (the "netdev" group or something similar) for your user to have the right to use network-manager. And changing /etc/network/interfaces to activate only the loopback interface (network-manager takes care of the rest).

[avend]

Alright, I just wanted to say that I 'solved' the problem.

For anyone interested I had to unmask dhcp to get the absolute most recent version, and that combined with explicitly stating information in the /wpa_supplicant (like proto=WPA, etc) seems to have made it work. Mostly though, I think it was DHCP being an older, unmasked version