orinoco_cs doesn't support WPA

[Reinhard Tartler]

hardware: pcmcia wireless card
driver: orinoco_cs

symptom: nm-applet does only offer unencrypted and WEP secured networks, but no WPA, which I need for my home network.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

I did some further research and tried wpa_supplicant manually. I attached a logfile, which indicates that the orinoco_cs doesn't provide the necessary extensions for wpa.

I used both -Dwext and -Dhostap

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

I'm also attaching the output of dmesg for indentifing my card.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

The following bugs seem to be related in some ways: #62685, #37260, #41652.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Why is this bug filed against kernel 2.6.19. this kernel is not in any ubuntu version right now. If you compilied it yourself it will not be supported by ubuntu.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

2.6.19 is currently in feisty, and shows the same behavior as 2.6.17 for this bug.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

gnomefreak@FeistyFawn:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu feisty (development branch)
Release: 7.04
Codename: feisty
gnomefreak@FeistyFawn:~$

gnomefreak@FeistyFawn:~$ uname -a
Linux FeistyFawn 2.6.17-10-generic #2 SMP Fri Oct 13 18:45:35 UTC 2006 i686 GNU/Linux
gnomefreak@FeistyFawn:~$

as of 1 hour ago 2.6.19 is still not in feisty.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

John: You don't see it because linux-meta has not been updated to automatically pull it in on upgrades.

It needs to be installed by the actual package name.

This is an upstream "bug". Is anyone sure that this card actually supports WPA?

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Ben thank you i ended up grabbing it the same night that i replied.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

No support in driver for this, and not high priority to put developer time into supporting it on an old chipset like this.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

Wont fix in 2.6.17.

[TJ (tj)]

Confirmed here with Ubuntu 6.10.

Hopefully this will save others from wasting hours or days trying to establish a WPA connection.

$uname -rv
2.6.17-10-generic #2 SMP Fri Oct 13 18:45:35 UTC 2006

This affects both Sony Vaio PCG-SRX41P and PCG-SRX51P/B with integrated Orinoco Mini PCI Card (on CardBus controller).

$ pccardctl ident
Socket 0:
  no product info available
Socket 1:
  product info: "Lucent Technologies", "WaveLAN/IEEE", "Version 01.01", ""
  manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002
  function: 6 (network)

$ sudo lshw
    description: Notebook
    product: PCG-SRX41P(GB)
    vendor: Sony Corporation
     *-firmware
          description: BIOS
          vendor: Phoenix Technologies LTD
          physical id: 0
          version: R0232U2 (01/24/03 )
          size: 114KB
          capacity: 448KB
          capabilities: pci pcmcia pnp apm upgrade shadowing escd int13floppy720 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer int10video acpi usb agp ieee1394boot smartbattery biosbootspecification netboot

           *-pcmcia:1
                description: CardBus bridge
                product: PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller
                vendor: Texas Instruments
                physical id: 5
                bus info: pci@01:05.0
                version: 01
                width: 32 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: pcmcia bus_master cap_list
                configuration: driver=yenta_cardbus
                resources: iomemory:f4103000-f4103fff irq:9
              *-network
                   description: WaveLAN/IEEE
                   product: Version 01.01
                   vendor: Lucent Technologies
                   physical id: 0
                   slot: Socket 1
                   resources: irq:9

   *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       physical id: 1
       logical name: eth1
       serial: 00:02:2d:45:ff:72
       capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=orinoco driverversion=0.15rc3 firmware=Lucent/Agere 6.16 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11b

[TJ (tj)]

In conjunction with a Russian kernel hacker I created a 2.6.x driver patch package and published it in the Forums that supports WPA2 using modified Agere source that they stopped developing at kernel 2.4.x.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2154534&postcount=18

I checked the legal status with Agere too, and you can see their confirmation as to the legal status in that thread too.

It should be pretty simple for someone to clean this up and produce a decent driver package that will work for all 2.6.x+ versions.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

cool. Please keep us updated in this bug about its progress!

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Just adding a note that we'll keep this open against the actively developed kernel bug against 2.6.20 and 2.6.22 this will be closed. Thanks.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

[decko (decko-ufpr)]

I'm using the lastest Intrepid Beta, with 2.6.27 kernel and orinoco_cs don't support WPA yet. With Windows I can use a Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card to conect to WPA configured router, but not with Ubuntu. So, the bug continues at 2.6.27 version.

[Martin von Gagern (gagern)]

It looks like David Kilroy is doing some work for WPA-enabled orinoco drivers. See these references:
Patch series intro: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/19671
Firmware file: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.drivers.orinoco.devel/873/focus=905
Orinoco driver tree showing patches comitted: http://repo.or.cz/w/orinoco.git?a=log
Command line utility to extract firmware from windows driver: http://repo.or.cz/w/agere_fw_utils.git

It would be nice to get the standalone version of the orinoco drivers (which includes these patches) together with the necessary tools and firmware files bundled in some DKMS-enabled ubuntu package and uploaded to some PPA. I might give this a try when I find the time, but I'm no debian packaging guru, so I wouldn't expect too much.

[Martin von Gagern (gagern)]

Some updates:
1. The standalone orinoco driver does not compile against the 2.6.27.9 headers, they are too old.
2. The patches by David Kilroy were merged into Linus' linux-2.6.git so I'd expect them in linux 2.6.28
3. The corresponding files grabbed from the git don't compile against 2.6.27.9 either, 2.6.28 has diverged too far
4. I managed to identify a bunch of relevant changesets and apply them to the 2.6.27.9 sources
The result should become available at https://launchpad.net/~gagern/+archive in the near future. I haven't given it any testing at all so far, and won't have the time to do so today. Those anxious to see this can give it a try, otherwise I'll get back here once the build is done, I've tested installing the package and using the module.

[Martin von Gagern (gagern)]

OK, the orinoco dkms package in my PPA does compile all right, and gets loaded after reboot. It also loads a firmware file if I copy it to /lib/firmware/agere_sta_fw.bin. So far the package does not include such a firmware file, in order to avoid possible collisions with future Ubuntu packages. You have to copy the firmware yourself for now.

So much for the good news. The bad news is that with the agere firmware I pointed out above my card still fails to establish WPA connections. Lots of messages in dmesg, most about dropped info frames or some such, which I take as an indication that this firmware is not for the hardware I have, some old Toshiba Mini-PCI card. I also couldn't find a Windows driver capable of WPA for this card, so using the agere_fw_utils to extract the firmware from windows drivers isn't an option either, and it might be the hardware can't support WPA with any firmware.

So I can't give you an answer as to if this driver would enable WPA on orinoco_cs cards, given the correct firmware. Please try this yourself, see if it works for you or not, especially if you have WPA working on Windows.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.

[mithro (mithro)]

Using wlags driver adds support WPA on the orinoco_cs.

This attachment includes the wlags driver with Debian packaging stuff. Also includes a Ubuntu package for wlags49-h1-cs-2.6.27-9-generic_2.6.27-9-generic-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

[pauleewaulee (pauleewaulee-gmail)]

mithro - I would like to install this wlags driver on a 9.04 machine but I think this has been built for an older kernel. Being a newbie can you talk me through the steps to get the wlags driver installing correctly on a freshly build 9.04 system?

Thx

[Azelphur (azelphur)]

mithro, i'm in exactly the same boat as pauleewaulee. Any help would be appreciated :)

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Reinhard Tartler, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, could you please test the latest upstream kernel available following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds ? It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Please do not test the daily folder, but the one all the way at the bottom. Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please comment on which kernel version specifically you tested. If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tags:
kernel-fixed-upstream
kernel-fixed-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

where VERSION-NUMBER is the version number of the kernel you tested. For example:
kernel-fixed-upstream-v3.11

This can be done by clicking on the yellow circle with a black pencil icon next to the word Tags located at the bottom of the bug description. As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the following tags:
kernel-bug-exists-upstream
kernel-bug-exists-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug's Status as Confirmed. Please let us know your results. Thank you for your understanding.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

I've filed that bug in 2006. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to that hardware. so I'm unable to contribute anymore to this bug.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Reinhard Tartler, this bug report is being closed due to your last comment https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/66696/comments/25 regarding you no longer have the hardware. For future reference you can manage the status of your own bugs by clicking on the current status in the yellow line and then choosing a new status in the revealed drop down box. You can learn more about bug statuses at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status. Thank you again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please submit any future bugs you may find.