Network-manager-called processes lack information about their state

[David Jaša]

Binary package hint: network-manager

I'm using unreliable wi-fi connections heavily last time. Much too often happens, that NM can't establish connection in situations, where just manual running of wpa_supplicant and dhclient can. Many times is the trouble, that
* NM doesn't pause the "establishing connection timeout" while link is down
* dhclient isn't aware, when link is down and doesn't delay sending packets to the times, when link is up

Apart from network-manager, problem can be also in dhclient not paying attention to the actual state of underlying layers. In attached log, you can clearly see, that DHCPDISCOVERs are sent when wpa_supplicant reports, that supplicant's state is 0 and link therefore isn't available. This problem occurs on up-to-date LTS Hardy (as of 2008/09/09).

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04

$ LC_ALL=C apt-cache policy network-manager
network-manager:
  Installed: 0.6.6-0ubuntu5
  Candidate: 0.6.6-0ubuntu5
  Version table:
 *** 0.6.6-0ubuntu5 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ LC_ALL=C apt-cache policy dhcp3-client
dhcp3-client:
  Installed: 3.0.6.dfsg-1ubuntu9
  Candidate: 3.0.6.dfsg-1ubuntu9
  Version table:
 *** 3.0.6.dfsg-1ubuntu9 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

in the log wpasupplicant is mostly in state 0 and only in state 1 for 2 seconds (Sep 9 21:29:49 cihla NetworkManager: <info> Supplicant state changed: 1) and 1 seconds (Sep 9 21:30:13 cihla NetworkManager: <info> Supplicant state changed: 1).

Maybe we have a chance to get an IP if we have a perfect timing, but that doesnt sound like a feasible environment to do networking.

Maybe attach a complete syslog to after reproducing this, to give me a better picture.

[David Jaša (dejv)]

It doesn't sound like a feasible environment, but it is the only Internet connection I have at the moment and when the connection is completed, it is quite reliable. Reliable enough to send this reply and attachments in normal Firefox. Critical is just making sure that DHCP packets are sent when the link is up...

I'm attaching whole daemon.log and syslog files from /var/log

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

 Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[David Jaša (dejv)]

2009/1/15 Martin Mai <email address hidden>:
> Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been
> any activity in it recently.

Because nobody was bothered enough to reply after I added more
information, as you can clearly see from bug comments. :-S

[Victor Vargas (kamus)]

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!