Unable to connect to WLAN protected with WEP by using the intel 2200bg

[Stefano Lenzi]

I have among others the following kernel available on my system:
OLD - 2.6.24-19-386
NEW - 2.6.24-21-386
The OLD one allows me to connect to Wireless LAN which are protected with 128-bit WEP by means of the Intel 2200BG wireless card. On the contrary the NEW one doesn't allow me to connect to WEP protected Wireless LAN.
In particular, if I try to execute the command:
iwconfig eth0 essid Kismet key s:aabbccddeeff123
I get the following message:
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
     SET failed on device eth0 ; Operation not supported.
Then by looking at the dmesg output I found the following log entry:
[ 1647.745604 ] eth0: could not initialize WEP: load module ieee80211_crypt_wep

If you need more information please let me know.

[Mr. Mike (mike-himikeb)]

I have a similar problem with the ipw2100 net card, and I think it is related to the linux-backports modules, because when I uninstall and reboot, it works just fine, but when I re-installed the linux-backports-jaunty package (and dependencies), the error returns and my ipw2100 can not connect to a WEP access point.

WithOUT the Jaunty Backports module, the following succeeds and I can connect:
mike@sharpie:~$ sudo iwconfig eth4 essid 2wire999 key open s:5678901235

But WITH the Jaunty Backports modules installed:
mike@sharpie:~$ sudo iwconfig eth4 essid 2wire999 key open s:5678901235
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
    SET failed on device eth4 ; Operation not supported.
mike@sharpie:~$ uname -r
2.6.28-13-generic

Relevant dmesg output:
[ 838.598220] eth4: could not initialize WEP: load module lbm_cw-lib80211_crypt_wep

[Mr. Mike (mike-himikeb)]

Update: This is interesting, I can work around this, even with the backports-modules installed.

It seems there is no lbm_cw-lib80211_crypt_wep module installed by the Jaunty backports.
If I issue the command:
   sudo modprobe lib80211_crypt_wep
before trying to use WEP, everything seems to work fine.
Is it possible there is just a disconnect in the naming of the crypt_wep module and what the back-ported ipw2100/ipw2200 drivers are looking for?

[jevgtv (tugevus)]

see bug 1011127

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Stefano Lenzi, thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu. Hardy Desktop reached EOL on May 12, 2011.
See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Is this an issue in a supported release? If so, could you please execute the following command, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:
apport-collect 285981

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]