Associating with WPA wireless network fails

dohldrums · 2011-07-21 12:46:18

Hi all, new to Arch Linux, but relatively experienced with Linux in general.

I recently did a fresh install of Arch on a desktop machine, and the primary way for this machine to connect is via a wireless PCI card.

I followed the instructions in the Wireless Setup wiki page and installed NetworkManager, and everything seemed to work just fine for about a day; I was able to connect to my office's wireless network on boot. However, our wireless router occasionally flips out and will drop all connections for a minute or so. The first time this happened, I couldn't re-connect to the wireless network, but rebooting solved the problem. The second time it happened, however, I was unable to re-connect, even after a reboot. All the other computers in the office can still connect just fine.

I've tried multiple different networking setups, including NetworkManager, wicd, netcfg, and manually connecting using wpa_supplicant. In all cases, when I try to connect to the network, I receive the following in /var/log/everything.log:

Jul 21 16:29:31 localhost kernel: [ 4300.253663] wlan0: authenticate with 00:02:6f:88:f0:14 (try 1)
Jul 21 16:29:31 localhost kernel: [ 4300.256207] wlan0: authenticated
Jul 21 16:29:31 localhost kernel: [ 4300.256236] wlan0: associate with 00:02:6f:88:f0:14 (try 1)
Jul 21 16:29:31 localhost kernel: [ 4300.260072] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:02:6f:88:f0:14 (capab=0xc31 status=0 aid=1)
Jul 21 16:29:31 localhost kernel: [ 4300.260078] wlan0: associated
Jul 21 16:29:36 localhost dhcpcd[4886]: dhcpcd not running
Jul 21 16:29:36 localhost kernel: [ 4305.215443] wlan0: deauthenticating from 00:02:6f:88:f0:14 by local choice (reason=3)
Jul 21 16:29:36 localhost kernel: [ 4305.234866] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain

This repeats 3-4 times until whatever networking tool I'm using gives up and tells me that the password is incorrect (I know it's correct, of course).

If I try to connect manually with wpa_supplicant, I receive the following output in a loop:

Trying to associate with 00:02:6f:88:f0:14 (SSID='tig' freq=2462 MHz)
Associated with 00:02:6f:88:f0:14
WPA: 4-Way Handshake failed - pre-shared key may be incorrect
CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=00:02:6f:88:f0:14 reason=0

My wpa_supplicant.conf was generated using wpa_passphrase, following the instructions on the WPA Supplicant wiki page. It looks like this:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel
network={
        ssid="myssid"
        #psk="MyPSK"
        psk=4d301fd204fc0e46d69ceb1c842af7321e5989823f0a56d73e9d72de814791ee
}

It seems to me this may be a driver problem since the issue is so consistent, but I don't know much about troubleshooting hardware issues in Linux. Any help would be appreciated.

If it's helpful, here's the output from lspci:

--snip--
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0)
03:01.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5008 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

and lsmod:

fuse                   67290  3 
ipv6                  288690  28 
ext2                   63714  1 
mbcache                 5793  1 ext2
arc4                    1450  2 
ecb                     2113  2 
ath9k                  81053  0 
mac80211              211662  1 ath9k
i915                  648410  3 
ath9k_common            2108  1 ath9k
ath9k_hw              293508  2 ath9k,ath9k_common
iTCO_wdt               12781  0 
drm_kms_helper         27529  1 i915
ath                    14355  2 ath9k,ath9k_hw
iTCO_vendor_support     1969  1 iTCO_wdt
snd_hda_codec_realtek   297871  1 
snd_hda_intel          22186  2 
drm                   181991  4 i915,drm_kms_helper
atl1c                  32631  0 
snd_hda_codec          77543  2 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel
ppdev                   5814  0 
asus_atk0110           10139  0 
parport_pc             31706  0 
cfg80211              146369  3 ath9k,mac80211,ath
snd_hwdep               6342  1 snd_hda_codec
rfkill                 15498  2 cfg80211
sg                     25621  0 
snd_pcm                73736  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer              19488  1 snd_pcm
parport                31439  2 ppdev,parport_pc
snd                    57256  10 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer
serio_raw               4366  0 
soundcore               6178  1 snd
psmouse                54752  0 
evdev                   9530  4 
i2c_algo_bit            5239  1 i915
pcspkr                  1891  0 
i2c_core               20165  4 i915,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit
snd_page_alloc          7161  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
intel_agp              10848  1 i915
intel_gtt              14359  3 i915,intel_agp
processor              24328  0 
button                  4510  1 i915
video                  11300  1 i915
xfs                   744464  2 
sr_mod                 14663  0 
cdrom                  36393  1 sr_mod
sd_mod                 27379  5 
pata_acpi               3448  0 
uhci_hcd               22435  0 
ata_piix               22045  4 
ehci_hcd               39359  0 
libata                173061  2 pata_acpi,ata_piix
usbcore               142192  3 uhci_hcd,ehci_hcd
scsi_mod              130020  4 sg,sr_mod,sd_mod,libata

dohldrums · 2011-07-22 05:42:11

Update: I came in to work this morning, and it connected to the wireless network perfectly. The only change from my previous post is that the computer was powered off overnight. Could the card be overheating?

ewaller · 2011-07-22 14:39:22

dohldrums wrote:

...Could the card be overheating?

I'm not sure what is happening, but I would venture that overheating is probably not the issue. In my experience, thermal issues have not a problem for wireless cards.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-07-21 12:46:18

Associating with WPA wireless network fails

#2 2011-07-22 05:42:11

Re: Associating with WPA wireless network fails

#3 2011-07-22 14:39:22

Re: Associating with WPA wireless network fails

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