WPA2 Enterprise wireless connection is often lost by itself

[Wirawan Purwanto]

Binary package hint: wpasupplicant

I installed 0.6.7 today on my laptop. It indeed resolves the problem with "Compound_MAC" problem in:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wpasupplicant/+bug/304126

I configured and built my wpa_supplicant with dbus support (for later uses, just in case), and only wext driver, which is the one used for my laptop. I put wpasupplicant as the first suspect of this bug, since it happens only with WPA2 Enterprise kind of encrypted wireless network.

However I still have a problem that I had with 0.6.4 earlier, namely that the connection often breaks by itself. This is my wpa_supplicant.conf section (with no username and password), using WPA2 Enterprise connection.

network={
    ssid="W-M_Wireless_Encrypted"
    scan_ssid=0
    key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
    eap=PEAP
    phase1="peaplabel=0"
    phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
    <email address hidden>"
    password="PASSWORD"
}

My campus website gives the following tech info:

   SSID: W-M_Wireless_Encrypted
   Encryption: WPA2 Enterprise
   802.1x/EAP Type: PEAP (Protected EAP)
   Authentication: MS-CHAPv2

The config that I used above could successfully authenticate my laptop on the encrypted network, and get me the IP address via DHCP.

When my connection is lost, I noticed from the debug file (/var/log/wpa_supplicant.eth1.log) that the BSSID that I am associated to is often "blacklisted", and sometimes re-whitelisted later. But when this happened, the connection could not be resumed. I don't understand something here... This seems to happen randomly, and usually after some period of idling. Not knowing whether scan_ssid is a culprit, I have tried scan_ssid=1 also, but it does not matter. The SSID is not hidden anyway.

When the connection is broken, the `wpa_cli status' and `iwconfig' still show "good" and "valid" connection, but I could not even ping outside my laptop.

Any help will be appreciated.

Wirawan

[Wirawan Purwanto (wirawan0)]

Alas nobody wants to follow this bug up. Here's a portion from the wpa_supplicant log that may be relevant:
1232472128.801483: WPA: Key negotiation completed with 00:0b:85:1b:cc:5e [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
1232472128.801506: Cancelling authentication timeout
1232472128.801523: State: GROUP_HANDSHAKE -> COMPLETED
1232472128.801540: EAPOL: External notification - portValid=1
1232472129.594198: EAPOL: startWhen --> 0
1232472129.802320: RTM_NEWLINK: operstate=1 ifi_flags=0x1043 ([UP][RUNNING])
1232472129.802360: RTM_NEWLINK, IFLA_IFNAME: Interface 'eth1' added
1232472129.802383: Wireless event: cmd=0x8b15 len=20
1232472129.802400: Wireless event: new AP: 00:00:00:00:00:00
1232472129.802427: Setting scan request: 0 sec 100000 usec
1232472129.802449: Added BSSID 00:0b:85:1b:cc:5e into blacklist
1232472129.802473: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED - Disconnect event - remove keys
1232472129.802490: wpa_driver_wext_set_key: alg=0 key_idx=0 set_tx=0 seq_len=0 key_len=0
1232472129.803249: wpa_driver_wext_set_key: alg=0 key_idx=1 set_tx=0 seq_len=0 key_len=0
1232472129.803284: wpa_driver_wext_set_key: alg=0 key_idx=2 set_tx=0 seq_len=0 key_len=0
1232472129.803311: wpa_driver_wext_set_key: alg=0 key_idx=3 set_tx=0 seq_len=0 key_len=0
1232472129.803337: wpa_driver_wext_set_key: alg=0 key_idx=0 set_tx=0 seq_len=0 key_len=0
1232472129.803364: State: COMPLETED -> DISCONNECTED
1232472129.803419: wpa_driver_wext_set_operstate: operstate 1->0 (DORMANT)
1232472129.803440: WEXT: Operstate: linkmode=-1, operstate=5
1232472129.803472: EAPOL: External notification - portEnabled=0
1232472129.803490: EAPOL: SUPP_PAE entering state DISCONNECTED
1232472129.803505: EAPOL: SUPP_BE entering state INITIALIZE
1232472129.803521: EAP: EAP entering state DISABLED

I am very curious about this line:

1232472129.802400: Wireless event: new AP: 00:00:00:00:00:00

It says it found a "new" AP with all-zero MAC address. Hmm.. that's weird. Any clue here? After this, the MAC that I was currently connected onto was blacklisted, and voila...I lost my wireless connection.

This never happened before with Ubuntu 7.04 with WPA supplicant 0.5.7.

Wirawan

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.