kubuntu cannot deal with wpa wireless link

[Paul Perkins]

Current (December 2007) status: the upgrade for 7.10 (Gutsy) left my "put magic text in config files with my bare hands" (or vi) manual configuration alone. But I still can't get KDE network stuff to even admit that such a thing as WPA2 encryption exists. But after seeing some of the trouble reports from folks who somehow did find a way to persuade knetworkmanager to try to manage a WPA2 link, I guess maybe I'm lucky I'm not one of them.

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After much else failed, I got Edgy to use my wireless link using the instructions at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202834 The hardware driver was never an issue -- the problem is that Ubuntu's handling of WPA (wireless encryption) is, as far as I have ever seen, completely broken.

Naturally, when I upgraded to 7.04, it broke the wireless link again. To fix it, so far, I think, I have deleted network-manager and it's evil kde front-end, and deleted the ####-ed lines from /etc/network/interfaces:

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.2.25
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.2.0
broadcast 192.168.2.255
gateway 192.168.2.1
dns-nameservers 192.168.2.1
wpa-driver wext
#### wpa-conf managed
wpa-ssid CENSORED
wpa-ap-scan 1
wpa-proto RSN
wpa-pairwise CCMP
wpa-group CCMP
wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
wpa-psk CENSORED
#### wireless-essid CENSORED
#### wireless-key s:CENSORED

I really wish Ubuntu would better test their releases with secured wireless networking.

[Javier Jardón (jjardon)]

Hello Paul,

Follow this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WPAHowTo/Kubuntu#EasySteps

Any already configured devices that you want to be available in Network Manager will need to de-configured, as otherwise they will be ignored.
The easiest way to do this is by going to System -> Administration -> Networking and then going to "Properties" of each connection. In Properties, just untick the "Enable this connection" checkbox. Logout then log back in again. These connections should now be available in Network Manager.
OR, the harder way, is to backup and then edit the /etc/network/interfaces file to remove the configuration of these devices (except for lo which is needed for the loopback interface). You will have to save the file and reboot for the changes to take effect (or don't reboot and run /etc/init.d/networking restart instead). For example, if you wanted Network Manager to be able to control all of your devices, your /etc/network/interfaces file would look somewhat like the following:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Do you still have problems?

[Paul Perkins (thirdspace)]

Javier,

Thank you for the helpful reply. The wireless link seems to be OK today. I'll try the instructions in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WPAHowTo/Kubuntu#EasySteps if/when I get time to experiment. For now, having the network connect without user intervention and before I even log in, is more convenient. The menu path System -> Administration -> Networking does not exist here, perhaps it is only in the Gnome GUI? The KDE menu has a System Settings choice that leads to a Network Settings GUI that seems to still think the obsolete WEP is the only encrypted protocol. This is what I referred to, half-jokingly, as "evil". The other thing that I think qualifies as a bug is that the upgrade process made the network stop working, and that information on how to get it working again was quite difficult to find. I only half-understand how the pieces of the networking puzzle fit together in Kubuntu anyway.

[Javier Jardón (jjardon)]

Ok Paul,

attach here the /var/log/dist-upgrade file

[Paul Perkins (thirdspace)]

As you can see in the attachment, I also encountered the "crash trying to remove old packages" bug, which I reported along with many others. But that appears to be the very last step before rebooting, so I don't think that the upgrade missed anything.

[Paul Perkins (thirdspace)]

Here is the apt.log too.

[Javier Jardón (jjardon)]

Can you try Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10?

[Paul Perkins (thirdspace)]

The good news is that my laptop upgraded from Kubuntu 7.04 to 7.10 upgraded without incident, once I deleted the ubuntustudio repositories from the apt configuration.

My manual, untouched by GUI applications, WPA2 (pre-shared key) wireless networking set-up, which works even though I don't understand it, survived the upgrade to 7.10 (unlike the upgrade to 7.04). I am pleasantly surprised.

However, all is still not perfect: the KDE interface for configuring the wireless networks is still demanding a "WEP Key", which leads me to think that it still doesn't know how to connect me to the WPA2-encrypted network I'm using to post this comment. See attached window image. Maybe I should install and try to use the kwlan or wpagui package? Surely Kubuntu wireless users are not all on insecure WEP encryption after all these years?

[Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg)]

Hi,

I fully agree with the remarks from Paul Perkins. I confirm this very bad wifi networking behavior in the latest release of Kubuntu Hardy Heron (used this livecd: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/alpha-5/hardy-desktop-i386.iso, released on 22-Feb-2008 02:33 )

Yesterday, I did a conclusive test using that livecd on my laptop. I have a WPA2 encrypted wifi network at home. I booted my laptop from that livecd, went into knetworkmanager and selected my WPA2 access point in the list of connections. knetworkmanager detected it as a WEP network and did not give me the choice to change to WPA or WPA2 or to manually correct it, which is not good. I manually set the right key, but it still did not work. I decided not to waste time. Connected laptop to router using LAN cable. Used LAN connection to manually install wicd (wifi manager). wicd detected my WPA2 connection without a fuss, asked for key, entered key. Had to restart wicd daemon a few times and then my wifi connection worked fine in the liveCD session.

Conclusion 1: title of this bugreport should be changed to "knetworkmanager and network-manager can detect WEP encryption, but not WPA/WP2. But wicd (wifi manager) can detect all types of encryption!"

Conclusion 2: I would like to see networkmanager and knetworkmanager replaced by wicd in the next releases of Kubuntu Hardy Heron...

Regards,

Mark

[Yuriy Kozlov (yuriy-kozlov)]

Could you test with gnome's network manager applet, preferably on Hardy? This sounds like it could be a bug in network-manager and not knetworkmanager.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!