# [Solved] WPA_Supplicant issues

## rabcor

Firstly, my home network was working as it should on wireless, now i'm in college trying to connect to a hotspot and i confirmed it worked on windows (dualboot ftw, its nice for me to have windows there)

anyways, after that i tried using wicd and i get the same issue, it fails to obtain an ip address.

The issue shouldn't be dhcpcd as i use that both on my eth0 (which works in here) and my wlan0 when at home.

my /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf looks like this

```

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

ctrl_interface_group=0

update_config=1

network={

        ssid="Siminn9C7A7A"

        psk="123456789"

        proto=RSN

        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

        pairwise=CCMP

        auth_alg=OPEN

        disabled=1

}

network={

        ssid="SiminnECA775"

        psk="123456789"

        proto=RSN

        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

        pairwise=CCMP

        auth_alg=OPEN

        disabled=1

}

network={

        ssid="Tskoli Hotspot-S"

        key_mgmt=NONE

        auth_alg=OPEN

}

```

my psk isn]t actually 123456789, i just edited it for this forum post.

the first 2 in this file are my secured home networks, i have 2 and both work on their own.

the bottom one is the hotspot at my college. and it fails to obtain the ip address.

/etc/conf.d/net

```
#modules="wpa_supplicant"

#wpa_supplicant_wlan0="-Dwext"

modules_wlan0="wpa_supplicant"

config_eth0="dhcp"

```

and i don't really know anything about wicd yet. but i wouldn't mind saving that for later and just focusing on making it work with wpa supplicant (wpa_gui)

i can learn how to use wicd later, or not and just use wpa_gui. might aswell.

lspci -v gives (long story short)

```
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6200 (rev 35)

        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6200 2x2 AGN

        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 45

        Memory at f2400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]

        Capabilities: [c8] Power Management version 3

        Capabilities: [d0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+

        Capabilities: [e0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00

        Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting

        Capabilities: [140] Device Serial Number 00-27-10-ff-ff-a5-2b-28

        Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi

        Kernel modules: iwlwifi

```

for more info on my actual card.

i don't think i know any other info i could provide, but i've been messing around with this for half my day now without success, so how do you think i could fix this? this is also (i think its worth mentioning) the first time i ever deal with wireless on a linux system, and it was sometimes hard enough to make it work on windows (back in my days of using windows XP when wireless cards were still a new technology)

I just double checked now that i got home from school whether i can make the wireless work over here at home, and it definetly still obtains the ip address,

----------

## wcg

I have not used wicd myself, but a user indicated in a conversation

in a different thread where another user was having problems with it

that wicd preempts the gentoo /etc/init.d/ scripts related to

wireless and networking and handles all of those configuration

and start-at-boot details itself. wicd seems to start wpa_supplicant

on its own. (The user had a wpa_supplicant script in /etc/init.d/,

but there was no mention of it in "rc-update show" output,

yet log messages showed that it was definitely running at boot.)

I would think your hotspot difficulties can be confined to finding

the right combination of options in wpa_supplicant.conf, whether

you use wpa_gui or wicd (not a kernel problem, or you would

have difficulties with your home networks, too).

----------

## rabcor

I must say i agree with you on that but that would probably turn into a long guessing game for me, i don't mind troubleshooting and spending hours on fixing some problems, wasting entire days even... but when the problem is network related i tend to shy away from them for some reason =( i'll need a few suggestions, thats why i posted the configs after all to see if i had something wrong   :Embarassed: 

I managed to connect to the wireless at one class today, next class, just down the hall after rebooting it stopped working.

I uninstalled wicd, went to wpa_gui and selected the hotspot, then it found the ip address and it worked perfectly,  next class just down the hall after rebooting, i tried connecting to the same hotspot, it failed, well... it actually does get an ip address... and it looks like its working, but internet still wont work, when i try to ping gentoo.org instead of getting "unknown host" i get timed out.

theres 2 buildings with different hotspots spread all over them, i only get an ip address in one of the buildings,  in the main building i get no ip address.

So now i have no wicd and i only use wpa_supplicant and its UIs to connect. its like i was able to connect to the network but not the internet i none building, and in the other it just fails to get an ip address basically. this keeps getting weirder and weirder.

----EDIT---

I just figured out when i asked a buddy of mine who studied networking for 2 years that he mentioned ipv6, and how i didn't realize until now that ipv6 is a relatively new thing and my wireless is probably not properly configured to use ipv6, and i remembered that when i connect with the ethernet it definetly mentions ipv6, don't remember the whole string tho but, these hotspots definetly use ipv6 and this might be my problem, i'll be looking into this and doing some googling about it.

----------

## rabcor

I've looked at the wpa_supplicant man page and tried all drivers (that made sense) and turns out the only one i can use is wext. I thought of a last resort to use a ndis driver but, i shouldn't need to since this card should work with linux native drivers, and also looks like it does.

I've reinstalled wpa_supplicant with the debug useflag and set conf.d/net to log it. I will bump with the logfile if i can't figure this out on my own and also ask my friend again whether he sees something new. Also if i find a solution i will post it here, one way or the other i'll edit in the next update into this post unless theres a reply inbetween (this was supposed to be an edit but... misclick).

In the meantime, a successful connection to my home network looks like this. (3 connects, one at boot, one is to another network at my home, and the last one is reconnecting to the original one)

```
Trying to associate with e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a (SSID='MySSID' freq=2417 MHz)

Association request to the driver failed

Authentication with e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a timed out.

Trying to associate with e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a (SSID='MySSID' freq=2417 MHz)

Association request to the driver failed

Associated with e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a

WPA: Key negotiation completed with e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]

CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a completed (auth) [id=0 id_str=]

WPA: Group rekeying completed with e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a [GTK=CCMP]

CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=00:00:00:00:00:00 reason=0

Failed to initiate AP scan.

Trying to associate with 58:98:35:ec:a7:75 (SSID='MyOtherSSID' freq=2462 MHz)

Association request to the driver failed

Associated with 58:98:35:ec:a7:75

WPA: Key negotiation completed with 58:98:35:ec:a7:75 [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]

CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to 58:98:35:ec:a7:75 completed (reauth) [id=1 id_str=]

CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=58:98:35:ec:a7:75 reason=0

Failed to initiate AP scan.

Failed to initiate AP scan.

Failed to initiate AP scan.

Trying to associate with e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a (SSID='MySSID' freq=2417 MHz)

Association request to the driver failed

Associated with e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a

WPA: Key negotiation completed with e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]

CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to e8:39:df:9c:7a:7a completed (reauth) [id=0 id_str=]

```

Also, the only changes i've made (so far) is that i set my IPV6 and universal TAP controllers to * instead of <m> in the kernel. i doubt it'll do much but... i don't know enough to know for sure, and besides couldn't hurt since i'll be using both of these anyways. "Association request to the driver failed" and "Failed to initiate AP scan" are the only errors i'm seeing, the former one looks particularily bad to me.

Here's my attempts to connect to the library's hotspot (main building, the one that does not give me an ip address, i could attempt to manually set an ip address to see what happens if  i find out how to do it)

Here's a pastebin with logfiles of my attempts to connect to the hotspot that actually gives me an ip address. and has now twice successfully worked seemingly completely randomly. yes today i managed to somehow get internet through this hotspot wirelessly, and i think that event should be within those logs, but i personally don't see any difference between the loggedconnection attempts, and also don't see any real error.

---EDIT---

I upgraded to the testing branch version 1.1 of wpa_supplicant.

I talked to my administrator and he said that the problem may be that my wireless is hanging on n (ieee_802.11b/g/n) but the hotspots use ieee_802.11g, and i need to configure that somehow.

Also  the hotspot that gives me an ip address is flagged as ESS when i scan it with wpa_supplicant, don't know what that means either. i'll have to look more into this, once i have one or 2 more details i'll ask the administrator more specifically. but first thing always should be to find the root of the problem. and the question is mostly whetehr its the drivers, wpa_supplicant or just my bad configuration...

----------

## rabcor

solved it, i feel so dumb right now.

I had to open it up with wpa_gui and set authentication to "Static WEP (No Authentication)" instead of plaintext. whats weird tho is that even if it now works, the configurations in my wpa_supplicant.conf haven't changed...

I'm connecting with these settings in the .conf file...

```
network={

        ssid="Tskoli Hotspot-S"

        key_mgmt=NONE

        auth_alg=OPEN

}

```

which are exactly the same as they were before, which kindof weirds me out a bit cus wpa_gui only sets these configurations for you in that file and nothing else really... or so i thought.

However with the ssid that only gave me an ip address was more complicated.

heres how i had to set that one up (and i had to use the config file for this)

```
network={

        ssid="Tskoli Hotspot-V"

        proto=WPA

        key_mgmt=NONE

        pairwise=CCMP

        auth_alg=OPEN

        eap=MD5

}

```

But one thing i'm curious about regarding the behavior of wpa_supplicant

that is. theres multiple SSID's within range, each is the same but with adifferent signal,does it automatically connect to the strongest signal?

----------

