Network manager forgets WPA Personal hidden network

[Mahesh Asolkar]

Binary package hint: network-manager

mahesh@radius:~$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu jaunty (development branch)
Release: 9.04
mahesh@radius:~$ apt-cache policy network-manager
network-manager:
  Installed: 0.7-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.7-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.7-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
--------------------
After an update this morning, my network manager does not connect to my WPA Personal, hidden network. After booting up, I wait for the nm-applet to start showing progress on wifi network connection. It just sits idle. After waiting for significant amount of time, I manually start the connection (nm-applet -> 'Connect to hidden Wireless Netowork'). Enter the network name, choose Wireless Security to be 'WPA & WPA2 Personal', enter the password and hit enter. The connection is established.

Next time I boot, I have to do this all over again. After I do nm-applet -> 'Connect to hidden Wireless Netowork', I do see my hidden network name in the 'Connection' list. But when I choose it, and say connect, It asks me for a WEP password. WPA is not even in the Wireless Security drop-down anymore.

Following is my wireless hardware:

02:0b.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection (rev 05)

[Mahesh Asolkar (asolkar)]

I have noticed that this happens more often when I start the laptop on battery power. It hasn't happened when I run on AC power.

When running on battery power, I also never see the battery information in the panel. When I restart/log off, I always see a prompt that says 'gnome-power-manager still running'. This does not happen when on AC power. I see the battery charging icon in the panel and there is no prompt on log out/restart.

I thought I'd mention this, if there is a relation at all.

[TJ (tj)]

I've been seeing the same symptoms with the Jaunty alpha-4 amd64 live-CD with iwl3945 and a hidden SSID. The encryption on the network is WPA2 TKIP+AES.

I've tried defining a new connection, and setting the details directly via the "Connect to hidden network..." option.

When it fails the resulting authentication prompt only asks for WEP varieties - there are no WPA/WPA2 options in the list.

[Alan LaMielle (alan.lamielle)]

I am seeing very similar behavoir. I recently updated to the latest jaunty packages as I generally do a few times a week. After a reboot, the wireless connection entry for my hidden SSID WPA2 Personal access point now refuses to connect. I'm convinced this is a bug somewere as this has been working for me quite well for the past few months. Here are the steps I've performed:

1) Deleted the wireless connection entry associated with the AP (lets call it AP_FOO).
2) I'm running a WRT54-GL Linksys router with the tomato firmware. I enable broadcast in the router setup.
3) Disable and enable wireless in the network manager applet (Gnome).
4) Select the (currently visible) SSID AP_FOO, enter the WPA2 Personal SSID.
5) A connection is instantly established and I am notified of this.
6) Internet is now working fine.
7) Disable wireless in NM.
8) Disable broadcast in my router config.
9) Enable wireless in NM.
10) No longer see AP_FOO in the list of APs in the NM dropdown, so I select 'Connect to Hidden SSID'.
11) Pick AP_FOO to connect to.
12) After waiting a considerable amount of time, no connection is made.
13) Eventually a dialog appears that contains my WPA2 passphrase, I click 'connect' as the passphrase is the correct encrypted version
14) The same dialog appears again, and again I click connect
15) After a while a new dialog appears asking me for a new passphrase, but this time for WEP and not WPA2 Personal, the same behavior as the original reporter notes.

Some system details:
$ apt-cache policy network-manager
network-manager:
  Installed: 0.7.1~rc1+20090220-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.7.1~rc1+20090220-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.7.1~rc1+20090220-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu jaunty (development branch)
Release: 9.04

My wireless hardware:
description: Wireless interface
product: Wireless WiFi Link 5300
vendor: Intel Corporation
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5300

I'm running on a Lenovo X200.

[Circuitrider (tjsilcott)]

Network manager forgets WPA Personal network.

This has been my problem ever since I started working with Ubuntu. I have had this problem with 7.? 8.10 as well as with 9.04. Has any one found a solution?

I travel full time for a living and find lots of locations where they give me their pass phrase but I am not able to connect because it is under WPA Personal. Can this problem be fixed. Please Help.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

as a workaround you can probably make a system connection out of it (e.g. in connection-editor flag "make available to all users").

[Circuitrider (tjsilcott)]

Thanks Alexander Sack for your suggestion. I have tried that but it still does not bring up the WPA Personal security. I am using Ubuntu 9.04 with the hp pavilian ze5300 with no changes in the software. I just updated my computer with Ubuntu 9.04 hoping that would solve my problem of not being able to connect with WPA Personal 2.

Just as with the other Ubuntu programs I am still not able to use wireless INTERNET if they use WPA personal as their Wireless security.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

this means that its a driver issue. if driver cannot connect NM will ask you for new passphrase at some point as a last resort measure.

What chipset/driver are you using? please attach complete syslog after reproducing the connect failure.

[Circuitrider (tjsilcott)]

I was not able to find a Chipset/Driver under
System Administration Hardware Driver
In fact there were no drivers under Hardware Drivers at all.

Then I ran: " sudo lshw -C network" and this came up. I hope this is what I needed to do for you to help me. Thanks for your help Alexander Sack. :-)

timothy@timothy-laptop:~$ sudo lshw -C network
[sudo] password for timothy:
  *-network:0
       description: Wireless interface
       product: Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset
       vendor: Intersil Corporation
       physical id: 9
       bus info: pci@0000:00:09.0
       logical name: wlan0
       version: 01
       serial: 00:02:8a:92:4c:ce
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=orinoco driverversion=0.15 firmware=Intersil 1.4.9 latency=64 link=no module=orinoco_pci multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11b
  *-network:1
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller
       vendor: National Semiconductor Corporation
       physical id: 12
       bus info: pci@0000:00:12.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 00
       serial: 00:0b:cd:8a:31:9a
       size: 100MB/s
       capacity: 100MB/s
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii fibre 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=natsemi driverversion=2.1 duplex=full ip=192.168.1.107 latency=90 link=yes maxlatency=52 mingnt=11 module=natsemi multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100MB/s
timothy@timothy-laptop:~$

[Circuitrider (tjsilcott)]

I also ran "bash /var/log/syslog" and this information came up.

Please take note that I can connect with other wireless networks as long as they do not use WPA Personal.

timothy@timothy-laptop:~$ /var/log/syslog
bash: /var/log/syslog: Permission denied
timothy@timothy-laptop:~$ bash /var/log/syslog
/var/log/syslog: line 1: May: command not found
/var/log/syslog: line 39: syntax error near unexpected token `('
/var/log/syslog: line 39: `May 6 11:46:27 timothy-laptop NetworkManager: nm_setting_802_1x_get_pkcs11_engine_path: assertion `NM_IS_SETTING_802_1X (setting)' failed'
timothy@timothy-laptop:~$

[Circuitrider (tjsilcott)]

Hi Alexander,
I am very new at this Ubuntu and not sure how to perform some of the
tasks that you are asking me to do. Could you let me know how to find
out what chipset/driver I am using. I also am not sure how to attach a
complete syslog nor how to reproduce a connection failure. I am willing
to learn if you could take the time to instruct me on how to do some of
these things.

Thanks for your help
Cercuitrider

On Tue, 2009-05-05 at 20:07 +0000, Alexander Sack wrote:
> this means that its a driver issue. if driver cannot connect NM will ask
> you for new passphrase at some point as a last resort measure.
>
> What chipset/driver are you using? please attach complete syslog after
> reproducing the connect failure.
>

[Circuitrider (tjsilcott)]

Where can I find a web site to be able to down load a new driver so that I can get WPA Personal working on my computer?

I have the hp pavilian ze5300

This worked under Window XP but not under ubuntu.

I would like to get this working with ubuntu if I can. Please HELP.

Curcuitrider

[Circuitrider (tjsilcott)]

I am still trying to get connected to wpa personal with no luck.

I have learned that I have a corporation Prism 2.5 with the wavelan Chipset.
With a Hermes Driver 3 orinco_pci and I am running WPA_supplicant

With this information could someone tell me how I can link into WPA Personal.

Thanks
Curcuitrider

[ktp420 (ktp420)]

Having the same issue with T30 with Prism 2.5 Wavelan and trying to connect to WAP2 Personal.

[ktp420 (ktp420)]

I was able to get T30 working with WPA2 after upgrading firmware and blacklisting orinoco drivers. Here is what I did:

I used following site to find the the firmware on Prism 2.5:

http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/

Then in windows, I upgraded the firmware to 1.8.2. I tried to upgrade in linux but was giving some issues.

Disabled orinoco drivers since they don't support WPA and also interfere with hostap drivers by adding following to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.cfg

blacklist prism2_pci
blacklist orinoco
blacklist orinoco_pci

Rebooted the system.

On the router, I enabled broadcast SSID. I noticed that if SSID is not broadcasted, then NetworkManager does not display the signal strength.

Connected to wireless and NetworkManager detected the correct security/encryption and asked for the password/key.

[RodGer (rodger)]

I have Ubuntu 9.10 and I experience the same problem. When I reboot it works fine but sometimes it disconnects with no obvious reason and then it asks for a password. Sometimes I choose to right click-> disconnect and then connect again but this doesn't always work. Maybe later I'll provide some more info. Until then, it would help me if somebody provided some specific commands I should give to get the needed info related to the problem on my computer.

[Sebastian Geiger (lanoxx)]

I have a similar problem which is that network manager tends to forget the wireless password sometimes. Here is what happens:
1. I am connected
2. I suddenly loose connection
3. When I try to reconnect network manager does not react to my click on the network name, that is, it does not even try to connect it simply shows no reaction and no cycling green or grey bubbles.
4. When I go to edit connection and click on wireless my wireless ap is unter last used: "Never" even though I was just connected.
5. I have to click edit, enter the system password (or is it for the keyring?!?) and then go to security and reenter the password, i notice that the password field is empty when the dialoge opens.
6. Sometimes I have to repeat steps 3-5 (suspending/resuming helps sometimes if it wasnt successful after several tries through 3-5)
7. I can connect now.

This happens serveral times a week. Analogous to being connected and loosing the connection I sometimes also resume from standby to find that i can not connect, here also steps 3-5 are the same.

While the above steps show a workaround this is quite annoying as everyone can see, especially if you quickly need connectivity.

[Sebastian Geiger (lanoxx)]

Here is a link from ubuntuforums where several users complain about the exactly same problem i reported:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1321005
and here is one more:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8348265#post8348265

I would like to request this bug be tagged high priority since it affects network connectivity and without internet many features from ubuntu are limited. This should get fixed still in karmic not only in lucid.

Notice that poster one from the first link also added his daemon.log file

[Sebastian Geiger (lanoxx)]

Here is my daemon.log, hope someone can pull some usefull information from it

[axx (axx)]

I gotta say I'm getting tired of Ubuntu doing stuff like this. It may not be Ubuntu itself, but really, in the past 4 years although there has been great progress, I feel basic stuff like sound or wireless can still get fucked with a simple update.
I can search bugs and try stuff to fix it. My mum shouldn't have to… thing is, she's also on Ubuntu.

So yes, this is high priority: many people only have a laptop these days, which means wireless.
No wireless = no use using Ubuntu.

Come on, let's stop breaking working stuff on upgrades!

[axx (axx)]

Sorry, as a side note to my rant, I'm experiencing this on Karmic 2.6.31-20-generic, with iwlagn driver for the integrated
Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)

[Securelpb (securelpb)]

I am experiencing the exact same problem as LanoxxthShaddow. I type in the WPA password, I can connect, disconnect, reboot all I want and everything is fine. Then for an unknown reason wireless disconnects and re-prompts for WPA passphrase.
Karmic 2.6.31-20-generic, Broadcom STA wireless driver.

[Mark Knowles (markknowles)]

Just adding another report.

I experience this bug on both a Macbook Pro (5,1) and an ASUS eee PC 1000H. I'm running a WPA2 enterprise network with AES+TKIP. The AP is a WRT54GL running OpenWRT Kamakaze. I will try to post some logs.

It happens multiple times per day. One other interesting thing to note is that it also happens on Fedora 12 on the Macbook Pro

[Mark Knowles (markknowles)]

Sorry, one more thing. I have two iPhones on the same WPA2 enterprise network and they never experience any issues.

[andbelo (andbelo)]

This bug is affecting my current system, Ubuntu 10.04, as it did with previous versions.