[Kubuntu Jaunty] : WPA2 not supported - Network plasmoid

[Swâmi Petaramesh]

Hi,

I've seen several bug reports about WPA2 not working in Jaunty, most turning into considerations about this or that specific wireless card driver considered as the possible issue.

Well, I've upgraded 4 laptops using different Wi-Fi cards (with ath5k, ath9k, ath_pci or iwl3945 driver modules) from Intrepid to Jaunty.

ALL of these laptops were supporting WPA2 properly in Intrepid and Hardy. None of these supports WPA2 anymore in Jaunty.

The KDE network plasmoïd "encryption" drop-down box doesn't even display a "WPA2" option on any of the machines.

However, all of these laptops support WPA (AES-CCMP) in Jaunty.

This boils down to : Kubuntu Jaunty doesn't support WPA2, considerations about a particular driver are irrelevant.

Either because of a network manager regression (that would affect Ubuntu as well, then), or because the KDE network plasmoïd doesn't handle WPA2 (and then it wouldn't affect users of the Ubuntu desktop).

[Graham Menhennitt (graham-menhennitt)]

dup 348275?

[Alessandro Ghersi (alessandro-ghersi)]

@Swâmi Petaramesh
Please post your comment in bug #348275, thanks. (and thanks Graham)

[Swâmi Petaramesh (swami-petaramesh)]

Bug #348275 goes in many directions, focusing on some specific WL NIC drivers, or stating "can't connect to anything but open networks", or discussing the issue of having simultaneously 2 frontends to Network Manager... which is not my case.

I opened a separate bug report because what I noticed is simpler both to understand and describe :

- On 4 different laptops that I have upgraded from Kubuntu Intrepid to Jaunty (final, not a beta or RC) :

- All having different WL NICs and drivers. All managing properly WPA2 with Knetworkmanager in Intrepid.

- All of them using the KDE plasma Network Manager controller in Jaunty, all of them with Knetworkmanager removed.

- None of them supports WPA2 anymore using Plasma NM widget. All of them still support WPA.

- Plasma NM widget doesn't even show a "WPA2" choice in the encryption choice box. So I suspect the issue to be either there or in Jaunty's NetworkManager itself. I don't believe this to be an issue with any specific WL NIC driver issue.

That's why I opened a separate bug report. I found the previous one was going in too many different directions and it's thread of comments was a really complex mess, where the description of the problem I saw on 4 different machines is rather simple and perfectly reproductible...

[Swâmi Petaramesh (swami-petaramesh)]

Installing linux-backports-modules-jaunty-generic apparently fixed WPA2 for me as described in Bug #348275

One may however wonder about the need for installing "backported" modules less than a week after the Jaunty distribution was released...

KDE 4.2's NetworkManager plasmoïd is definitely buggy anyway :

- It only shows an option for "WPA", not "WPA2", event though after installing backported modules this will allow connecting to a WPA2-only AP.

- Even though the network password have been "saved" (using KDE Wallet), the plasmoïd will stubbornly ask to manually type the network password again in at least 2 situations:
a/ When manually changing from a wireless net to another (even though both networks have been duly registered with their respective passwords).
b/ When, at KDE startup, I'm prompted for the Kdewallet password for getting the network key. If I don't type it quickly enough (i.e. I was away from the machine while KDE was starting up), then the plasmoïd will request the network password by itself (and the 1st connection attempt will subsequently fail anyway)
c/ In the situation where the network plasmoïd asks several times for the password, it will duplicate each time the same network entry in its "connection list", so you end up with a "connection list" containing 10 times the same net...
d/ Sometimes displays the name of the currently connected network, sometimes not. When it does it shows (at least in french) : "xxxConnecté à « somenetworkname »" the "xxx" being actually displayed, ooks like a string placeholder that was forgotten there...

Well, the KDE Network plasmoïd is currently so buggy and it is so obvious that I wonder if it's really worth describing it...