[gutsy] network-admin does not update WPA PSK

[Toon Spin]

Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools

Each time when starting up, I find that my wireless network doesn't work. Launching network-admin shows me that my "network password" (which is what I type into the text field, not what's in the interfaces file) has changed to some very long string; I can't see what it changed it *to* because it's all bullets. So I change it back, but it still doesn't work. I have to change it back a few times for it to finally catch.

Information I can provide you with at this time:
- using an AMD64 X2 processor, but running an i386 Gutsy
- my essid is "159" and its password is a 12-character string that consists of nothing but letters
- using WPA-personal
- network hardware is a Linksys PCI wireless card, combined with a WLAN access point, also Linksys.

I'm not sure if I can reproduce by simply logging out and then back in, because I haven't tried. My guess is, network-admin mistakes the PSK for the password and generates a new PSK from the old one by mistake.

[Filiprino (filiprino)]

I think I have a similar issue. I use manual configuration to connect to my WLAN network. I write the correct ESSID, then I select "WPA Personal" as my password type, and then I write my PASSPHRASE (not the PSK key resulting from the passphrase). Of course, I set up correctly all the IP parameters.

After configuring manually my wireless connection, it doesn't get connected. In my router, the laptop is connected but not authenticated, so the problem must be the PSK key that the laptop is using.

Effectively, that's the problem, network-admin does not write a correct PSK key on the "/etc/network/interfaces" file, because using the command "wpa_passphrase" gives me a different PSK key which works after restarting the interfaces with "/etc/init.d/networking stop" and "/etc/init.d/networking start" (before restarting the networking service, I modifiy the PSK key in the interfaces file and put the correct one).

And this is an annoying problem, because every time I start Ubuntu, I have to change the PSK key on the "interfaces" file, because the PSK key is overridden with the wrong one, so I have to modify it and restart the networking service everytime I start Ubuntu.

[Filiprino (filiprino)]

Here is my "interfaces" file created by network-admin.

[Filiprino (filiprino)]

And the output generated by the wpa_passphrase command is in this attached file.

[Filiprino (filiprino)]

And a screenshot of the configuration dialog for the Wireless connection. As you can see, the WPA password is very long, as the first bug reporter says.

[Filiprino (filiprino)]

Well, I think I've found the solution... you must put your ESSID between (") symbol.
For example, my ESSID is Jazztel Wireless 01
I tried with Jazztel\ Wireless\ 01 and it would encode the passphrase OK, but the wpa-ssid of the interfaces file resulted in Jazztel\ Wireless\ 01 SSID, so it would not connect.
After trying that, I wrote "Jazztel Wireless 01", the passhprase was correctly encoded and the resulting wpa-ssid line in the interfaces file was "Jazztel Wireless 01". With that SSID it connects flawlessly.

So the conclusion is that the SSID must be between commas (") (or whatever name has that symbol in english :) ) in order to get the WPA key correctly encoded and the SSID string correctly represented.

[Filiprino (filiprino)]

Uh, after a few reboots, it seems that I have to manually retype the passphrase on the network-admin dialog, because it gets changed to a very long string. Once I retype it and close the properties dialog of the wireless adapter, the internet connection starts working again.
I think this is the exact bug reported in the first message, and I was suffering another bug related to strings representation.

[Basilio Kublik (sourcercito)]

Hi there
Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. I was wondering is this still an issue for you?, could you please try to reproduce this issue under the development version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron?

Thanks in advance.

[Filiprino (filiprino)]

Yes, I can confirm this bug under the development version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron. The attachment is an screenshot, showing a very long string in the password field, when it should be an string of 12 characters.
Also note that the ESSID is between commas, which should not be needed.

[Filiprino (filiprino)]

Here is the attachment.

[Adrian VELICU (subscribe-velicu)]

Hello,

The problem happens on my system as well.

[Filiprino (filiprino)]

I think this should have been fixed by now, ok, it's not very important because not many people configure its wireless LAN manually... but for the ones who do it, it's very annoying having to retype your WPA passphrase every time you boot Ubuntu (it also means having to type your sudo password TWO times, now because of the Policy Kit, every time you boot the OS), and of course, the issue with the ESSID string which has to be written between commas in order to get correctly recognised the blank spaces is another annoying bug.

Oh, I'm not blaming anyone, hehe :-) (reading my comment again seems as if I'm blaming everybody here haha).

[Adrian VELICU (subscribe-velicu)]

I found some sort of fix for it.

It seems that by default network-admin does not write "auto wlan0" in /etc/network/interfaces.
This can be fixed by editing ~/.gnome2/network-admin-locations/<name of location> and changing auto=false to auto=true in the section corresponding to the wireless interface. I'm not sure why this is necessary, though.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

I forwarded this upstream

[Steve Lamb (stevelamb)]

I just downloaded Ubuntu 8.10 and I have the same problem. I edit wireless security using WPA & WPA2 Personal placing my encryption Key in the password field. After pressing OK I enable wireless and the system attempts to connect to my network. Eventually a dialog box shows up with the field for the password filled in with a very long string of characters. I delete the characters and put in my encryption key again. Finally, the system connects successfully to my network.

Has there been any fix or work around for this problem? Thank you.