[hardy] ifup fails to trigger association with WEP access points

[Tony Espy]

Binary package hint: ifupdown

I've been debugging a customer problem with a MID device in which they report that Manual Configuration of WEP access points doesn't work ( ie. my device doesn't associate with the AP, and thus never comes online ).

I have no problems connecting to the same access point using NetworkManager / nm-applet.

It's taken me awhile, but I've finally traced Manual Configuration of Wireless from the gnome-system-tools application network-admin to liboob, to system-tools-backends, to ifupdown.

I've also had most of the people in my office ( Canonical Lexington ) try the same scenario, and so far, nobody else has been able to get Manual Configuration / WEP to work either, so this is not a problem specific to the device ( or driver ) we're working with. FYI, the driver in question has it's own problems... it's the Marvell sd8686 driver ported by Intel.

I've also tried manually running ifup with the same interfaces stanzas that network-admin produces, which is why I'm adding this as an ifupdown bug.

The version of ifupdown on the system's I've tested is 0.6.8ubuntu8.

Here's what my /etc/network/interfaces file contains:

--------------------------------------------------------------------
auto lo
iface l0 inet loopback

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-key s:FAKEKEYFORWEP
wireless-essid UbuntuTest

auto wlan0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Note -- I've tried this with a Macbook Pro ( Santa Rosa ) running madwifi, a Sony Vaio using an ipw2x00 card, a ThinkPad running madwifi 0.9.4, and none of them work.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

That configuration looks valid (except for "iface l0" which I assume is a typo), though it's possible that additional configuration is required which NM is doing automatically.

Are you able to get the interface up and running manually using iwconfig on wlan0? If so, which options do you use? the wireless-* options just call out to iwconfig with the corresponding options.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

Yes, the loopback iface error was a typo...

As for your second question, no I haven't been able to get the interface to associate using iwconfig. The driver has "ordering" problems ( ie. the wireless ioctls need to be called in a particular order ). I'm going to report this as a bug to Intel ( reported against the moblin-kernel...home to the Marvell WLAN drivers ), although I don't have many hopes for any kind of quick resolution from them.

I can get the interface to associate using wpa_supplicant and a hard-coded config file. Lool and I just discussed on IRC and one possibility for this device is to translates the IF_WIRELESS_* variables in the script /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wireless-tools to IF_WPA_* variables. This would cause the wpa_supplicant script to do the right thing ( I *think* ).

That said, one question Lool and I both had was why there are wpa_supplicant scripts in both /if-pre-up.d and /if-up.d?

Finally, although there may be an underlying driver problem in my particular case, I also mentioned that nobody else in our office here could make their laptops associate with the AP in question via "Manual Configuration", so it feels like there *may* be a more fundamental bug lurking...

[madbiologist (me-again)]

Official support for Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" and earlier releases has ended. If this still occurs in Ubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" please run ubuntu-bug to file a new bug report so that we can get a current set of log files and system information.