wpa_supplicant - What's happening?

[Timothy]

Since the upgrade to wpa_supplicant 1.02-pclos2012, my WiFi world has been filled with pain.  No networks in Network Centre, wicd not accepting config settings (fixed), cannot connect to home network running WPA 'cos wireless settings keeps coming up WEP ().

For the last few weeks, I spend an hour or two daily connecting to my home network.  Delete wlan0; recreate wlan0; use DHCP; use static IP; use static DNS; use wicd; use Netapplet.  Sometimes it works, most times it doesn't.  I even considered buying a 50 foot Ethernet cable.  Guys, this is not good Public Relations for Linux.

Anyway, I finally threw my hands up in dismay and went searching for a previous version of wpa_supplicant.  I kinda washed out on the web-searching, but I knew that spout.ussg.indiana.edu quit updating a couple of years ago, and YES, they have... 0.6.10-2pclos2010??  A little older than I'd hoped, but what the heck, it can't be worse than the WiFi Hell I'm going through right now.  Downloaded it, installed it, rebooted it.

YEA! Instant connection to home network! No muss, no fuss, just smokin' wireless. 

Does anyone have an rpm newer than 0.6.10-2pclos2010 but definitely NOT 1.02-pclos2012?

[Just17]

You could try this .....

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50217193/wpa_supplicant-0.7.3-1pclos2011.i586.rpm

[Howard]

It seems to me that Timothy's problem and mine are the same, although I don't know enough about the inner workings to be able to deal with it without help.  My working older installation (in a partition on the same computer) is also 0.7.3-1pclos2011, and I have downloaded the rpm.  I know how to remove the newer version using Synaptic but not how to install the older one from a file rather than from a repository, can someone give me directions please.   I can access the rpm from the updated version without any problem - they all have access to the same data partitions.

[JohnW_57]

Start konsole or terminal
Su to root
Go to the download folder where the rpm package is downloaded

The command for installing is: rpm -Uvh wpa_supplicant-0.7.3-1pclos2011.i586.rpm
If you have no other rpm packages in the download folder you can use also: rpm -Uvh *.rpm

JohnW

[Howard]

Thanks John and Timothy.  That's solved my problem, this is being posted from the previously non-connecting installation.

I thought it might be rpm -Uvh as I've used that when installing the true versions of OpenOffice from the instructions, but I wanted to be sure.  Glad to know that it's universal.

[johnmart]

I think this issue was fixed with this modified libdrakxnet from terryn;
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,111001.15.html

But before applying that better read the thread from the top to see if it matches your problem.
Maybe consider trying it with the current wpa_supplicant version.

I had the trouble you listed & the above fix worked for me with wpa_supplicant 1.0.2.

[GOTHBITES]

I think this issue was fixed with this modified libdrakxnet from terryn;
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,111001.15.html

But before applying that better read the thread from the top to see if it matches your problem.
Maybe consider trying it with the current wpa_supplicant version.

I had the trouble you listed & the above fix worked for me with wpa_supplicant 1.0.2.

I wondering if I can remove the modified libdrakxnet  and revert  back to the old one?

[Gagarin Gambit]

It seems that the latest wpa_supplicant update fixed the issues, no workarounds needed anymore
(Happy new year PCLOS!)

[snoz]

It seems that the latest wpa_supplicant update fixed the issues, no workarounds needed anymore
(Happy new year PCLOS!)

+1
all good here too on my Dell laptop with broadcom wireless

[sling-shot]

It seems that the latest wpa_supplicant update fixed the issues, no workarounds needed anymore
(Happy new year PCLOS!)

Which version?

[Howard]

It seems that the latest wpa_supplicant update fixed the issues, no workarounds needed anymore

I can confirm this.  With some trepidation I updated to 1.0-3pclos2012, and it still works.

[sling-shot]

Strange! On the same machine in 2 regular KDE installations, I saw opposite behaviour.

In my more conservative regular use installation, there was no problem with wpa_supplicant 1.0-3 while on the test installation I lost WiFi with the latest update I believe.

Here is the short lspci -v from the failed connection:

Code: [Select]

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Wistron NeWeb Corp. Device 051a
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
        Memory at fea00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: wl
        Kernel modules: wl, brcmsmac

And trying to remove the higher wpa_supplicant to install older version linked above needed to remove network manager too. Luckily I had the .rpm in /var/cache/apt and could install from there along with older wpa_supplicant.

Now all is well. But I will need to pin it to older version only.

[Howard]

I thought the faulty version was 1.0-2 and the fixed one 1.0-3?  (People are not always clear about which version they are referring to.)  1.0-3 was the latest one in the repo I used yesterday and still is the latest.)

[Gagarin Gambit]

I thought the faulty version was 1.0-2 and the fixed one 1.0-3?  (People are not always clear about which version they are referring to.)  1.0-3 was the latest one in the repo I used yesterday and still is the latest.)

Yes, I'm referring to 1.0-3, that's the version which fixed it for me. Although now that I look into it... I guess that the trick was done by Terry's drakx-net patch (0.87-12) which hit the repos a few days ago.

[DeBaas]

Today I tried to connect my desktop wireless to my home network (updated PASS)
Standard this box is wired connected to the net, but I need to demo on saturday..... wireless.
Both Ralink, 54g and 150n, a nogo.
First tried TerryN's solution, all SSID's vissible but no connection.
Next installed conform this thread:
rpm -Uvh --oldpackage wpa_supplicant-0.7.3-1pclos2011.i586.rpm
(With --oldpackage it's a forced downgrade + networkmanager is not removed)
Problem solved.

For checking I installed the 1.0-3 version again and rebooted.
The system came up connected.
After a manual disconnect I could not login again
So back to the 0.7.3-1, succes.

Tested with both USB sticks:
Ralink 54M.USB......
Ralink 802.11 n WLAN

As side effect I tried ndiswrapper, but always greated with, can not find ndiswrapper interface.