WLAN does not work with NetworkManager installed (ACX111) (Feisty)

[Tristan Brindle]

Binary package hint: network-manager

The ACX111 driver included in the Feisty kernel does not work with NetworkManager: NM displays a list of available networks, but attempting to connect to one just times out.

Whilst this was annoying, it wasn't a problem until recently, as one could just configure the wireless network the "old fashioned" way with network-admin, by disabling "roaming mode".

However, a recent update to NetworkManager has caused it to try to "take charge" of wireless connections even if "roaming mode" is disabled in network-admin. Consequently the user cannot connect to any wireless network by any means.

The only workaround I have found so far is to remove the network-manager package from my machine completely, but clearly this is less than optimal.

I would be grateful if you could please have a look at this, as it's a serious regression from Edgy as anyone with an ACX111 card will find it broken when they upgrade to Feisty (and will probably have no means to look for help, either).

If possible, please go back to the old behaviour of NM ignoring entries in /etc/network/interfaces (or even better, fix things so that NetworkManager and the ACX111 driver work together the way they should!)

Many thanks. If you need any more info about this problem, please let me know.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Thank you for your bug report, can you please test if your bug is still present using the latest gutsy desktop cd?

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

to grab the latest Gutsy Desktop cd please visit
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily/current/

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

no reply by reporter. If you can provide the asked infos, please reopen this bug.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

It still has problems with Gutsy. I've tested it with ACX111 and DWL-520+. Caused a kernel panic.

[Joachim Frieben (jfrieben)]

I have tested ACX111 support with yesterday's Gutsy live CD, and the driver works well with my DWL-G520+ adapter.

NM doesn't pick up the network. However, it's possible to set up a WLAN connection in the 'old fashioned' way although this requires some tweaking. In a first time, the adapter doesn't connect to the AP. and there are error messages reported by 'dmesg':

[ 823.768203] wlan0: association FAILED: peer sent Status Code 18 (Assoc denied: requesting STA doesnt support all data rates in basic set)

For some reason, the ACX111 driver picks up a rate of 2M as reported by 'iwconfig wlan0' whereas the AP only provides 11M. The problem thus is not an NM problem in the first place but a driver problem. Available rates are obtained via 'iwlist':

iwlist wlan0 rates
wlan0 1 available bit-rates :
          11 Mb/s
          Current Bit Rate=11 Mb/s

After setting the rate to 11M by hand or an entry in 'interfaces', it's finally possible to bring up the network with 'ifup wlan0' which failed before. Maybe there is way to configure the AP differently, but I have no access to it.