[dapper] NM has problems obtaining DHCP with acx_pci driver

[Tomasz Dominikowski]

Network-manager in Dapper current (as of today) works beautifully, but someone clearly missed one feature.

With normal GNOME networking, my insecure wireless connection is treated as an Ethernet LAN connection, which is true.

I get a 192.168.x.x IP every time I log on to this network. Then, when I try accessing any webpage, the WiFi server redirects me to an authentication page, where I have to input my login and password. When I do it and hit OK, the WiFi lets me surf the net.

Only then does the wireless network function. This is all working fine *without* the network-manager.

I've installed it, it detected the network, got an IP and was all happy , but I couldn't connect to any website and the authentication page doesn't show up. I've switched network-manager off and tried the normal way again, it worked fine.

[Tomasz Dominikowski (dominikowski)]

It seems that the problem is bigger.

With network-manager I'm being given a completely bogus IP number when connected to any of the three available wireless networks. What's more weird, network-manager gives me the same IP for all three networks, despite the fact that two of them are secure and I can't connect to them in no way using normal networking tools.

The IP for all the networks is 169.254.175.36.
Broadcast address is 169.254.255.255
Subnet mask is 255.255.0.0
All the other fields are 0.0.0.0
There's also a hardware address, but that' irrelevant.

Clearly something is wrong. I'm using an D-Link DWL-650+ PCMCIA card using the acx_pci driver. It works just fine, out-of-the-box, without the network-manager.

[Tomasz Dominikowski (dominikowski)]

I can give you another clue. network-manager says that the connection speed is 22mbit/s. This speed, when forced using iwconfig, hardlocks my laptop. There is no way to get that speed currently. It's on full auto and usually works at 11mbit/s max (I'm talking without network-manager).

[hackel (hackel)]

This has nothing to do with your authentication application which resides completely on the external network/router. My guess is that Network Manager is not associating to the AP properly, which is why dhclient is unable to fetch an IP and is assigning that default IP for everything. It's really odd that this is happening, however, vs. Network Manager simply failing to bring up the connection. Have you changed your dhclient configuration? You need to post the output of /var/log/syslog when NM tries to connect, this is undoubtedly a dupe of another bug, just have to figure out which one.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Comment from upstream:

So, you're being given an autoip address because NM can't get one with DHCP.
Can you post some logs from networkManager? NM logs with syslog, so the logs
should go to /var/log/messages or wherever your distro redirects NetworkManager
syslog messages to.

[Tomasz Dominikowski (dominikowski)]

OK, I will bring this up once again as I've tried to reproduce this bug.

Clean install of dapper. Updated fully. Installed package network-manager-gnome. Ran the command "sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/hicolor" just to be sure nm-applet --sm-disable starts. Edited /etc/network/interfaces to comment out everything but "auto lo" and "iface lo inet loopback". Restarted machine. nm-applet started fine, when I clicked it it showed both available networks. I clicked the free one, the one I use (with webpage https authentication after which I can surf freely). After about 30 seconds nm-applet stopped spinning its icon and showed the "no connection" icon again and indeed, it did not work, so we have some kind of progress, it does not assign a bogus IP anymore. It's all zeros. I will attach my targzipped syslog in a few moments. I know the wlan0 connection looks very ugly there, but it works fine in reality (without using network-manager-gnome).

[Tomasz Dominikowski (dominikowski)]

Sorry for the size, but nothing a good search query wouldn't workaround. I didn't know what is relevant and what is not.

[Tomasz Dominikowski (dominikowski)]

Sorry for the comment flood, but am I to change the status to confirmed now that I've provided information? and what about upstream? do I have to make an account in the gnome bugzilla and paste the comments there? I will change the status here, if this is not expected I'm sure someone will just revert it.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

After having tried out the acx driver with dapper and my experience with wpa_supplicant, I think this bug has little to do with network-manager itself, but with the acx100 driver. it doesn't properly implement wireless extensions, so that wpa_supplicant cannot properly drive the card.

without wpa_supplicant, there is little what n-m can do.

[Scott Robinson (scott-ubuntu)]

Oh, definitely. However, this bug should remain as at least a "warning" to other NM users. (Until the issue is fixed.)

[Tomasz Dominikowski (dominikowski)]

Maybe an update of the ACX driver would solve this issue? Well, for Edgy at least, or does Edgy use the most recent driver already? I will try a daily image of Edgy next week (or is this the same version used anyway?)

[Johan Sköld (johan-skold)]

I can confirm this problem still exists, even in Edgy. NetworkManager refuses to connect to wireless networks, but can show them without problem. I'm actually glad to hear the acx driver has issues, since now I'm finally able to blame something for poor wlan support.

[Jerry Chong (zanglang)]

Confirmed on Edgy 6.10 with a DWL-G650+ card. Network-manager will only work once switched to ndiswrapper.

Has anyone tried out the alternatives on the ACX100 page? http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/WPA

[aexl (aexl)]

Hi Jerry, do you have a link at hand how to do this ("will only work once switched to ndiswrapper") ?
This might provide a quick fix for people like me.

[Tomasz Dominikowski (dominikowski)]

I'd also like to know the solution as I've completely switched to network-manager by now. Any help with setting up this card with ndiswrapper?

[Jerry Chong (zanglang)]

Sure! Try these links:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=110944
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=74651
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=285809 (This is for Broadcom cards, but the steps are pretty similar)

A few things of note:
- you'll need to install ndiswrapper-utils-1.8 instead of 1.1 (there's 2 similarly-named packages in the repository). For some reason 1.1 didn't work for me.
- You'll need to prevent the acx_pci kernel module from loading so ndiswrapper can take over, so add: "blacklist acx" to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, and then do "sudo modprobe -r acx" before moving on to loading ndiswrapper.
- You'll need to use this link:
ftp://ftp.dlink.co.uk/wireless/dwl-g650+_rev_Bx/dwl-g650+_bx_drv_utility_v3.10b19.zip
for the driver.

The rest is just the same as the links I've posted. I sincerely apologize for hijacking this bug report though. Good luck. ;)

[Rafał Próchniak (burlap)]

DWL-G650+ (acx111) doesn't work with NetworkManager under feisty herd4 livecd.

It connects manually though.

[Tomasz Dominikowski (dominikowski)]

It seems that in Feisty the acx100 driver is able to co-operate with network-manager without any issues. My acx100 based D-Link DWL-650+ card works without problems. I had to install linux-restricted-modules-generic to pull the acx firmware. This bug is fixed now. At least for me. Any other success stories?

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

It sounds as if this bug has been resolved in Feisty based off the last comments in the bug report. Is there anyone for whom this does not work in Feisty?

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

In Gutsy's release (using LiveCD as well as installation), DWL-520+ with the ACX100 module works fine with manual configuration, whereas with NetworkManager, a kernel panic (oops) is induced.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

both, drivers and networkmanager have improved a lot since this bug was filed. Since I retrieved confirmations that acx_pci driver works now in gutsy, I assume this is fixed for you as well. If you still see it, pleaes reopen, attach your /var/log/syslog as well your /etc/network/interfaces files to this bug report.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

Okay, I just tried it again and it works perfectly. =)

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

...Or not. I just realized that I was actually using ndiswrapper when it worked perfectly. Here's the contents of my /etc/network/interfaces file:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth1
#iface eth1 inet dhcp

auto eth2
#iface eth2 inet dhcp

auto ath0
#iface ath0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0

And my syslog is attached.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

fixed in gutsy++.