Arch Linux

SubGothius

Member

Registered: 2009-04-07

Posts: 13

[SOLVED] netcfg fails w/ WPA & hidden ssid, manual WPA comes up fine

Greets,

New to Arch (but tinkered with Debuntu before, even got that installed on an "oldworld" PowerMac clone!), just got it installed on my ThinkPad T42p and updated with pacman -Syu, trying to get my wifi with WPA and a hidden ssid to connect automatically at boot, or even bring it up at all with netcfg.  I've got an Atheros 5k card, using madwifi (since the ath5k driver doesn't seem to work with wpa_supplicant yet), and I can bring up a connection manually just fine with this procedure:

# ifconfig ath0 up
# iwconfig ath0 essid myssidgoeshere
# wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -i ath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
# dhcpcd ath0

That success suggests my /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf is fine:

/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel

network={
  ssid="mySSIDgoesHere"
  psk="myHexKeyGoesHere"
}

However, I can't bring it up using a netcfg profile, neither automatically during boot nor invoking by shell command 'netcfg home' after boot, always gives a "Wireless association failed" error.  This suggests there's something amiss in my /etc/network.d/home profile config:

/etc/network.d/home

CONNECTION="wireless"
INTERFACE="ath0"
SECURITY="wpa"
ESSID="mySSIDgoesHere"
KEY="myHexKeyGoesHere"
IP="dhcp"
TIMEOUT=30

I've also tried this alternate config:

/etc/network.d/home

CONNECTION="wireless"
INTERFACE="ath0"
SECURITY=wpa-config
WPA_CONF=/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
IP="dhcp"
TIMEOUT=30

BTW, lengthening the TIMEOUT in any case doesn't help, either.

Here's my /etc/rc.conf (excerpt of relevant lines):

...
MODULES=(... !ath5k ath_hal ath_pci wlan ...)
...
#ath0="dhcp" # netcfg wiki says this is unnecessary
#INTERFACES=(ath0) # netcfg wiki says this is unnecessary
...
gateway="default gw 192.168.0.1"
ROUTES=(!gateway)
...
NETWORKS="home ethernet" #'ethernet' profile for wired cxn, works fine when plugged in
AUTO_NETWORKS="home ethernet"
...
DAEMONS=(net-profiles net-auto @syslog-ng netfs @crond) # netcfg wiki says 'network' is unnecessary here

So folks, what am I missing?

SOLVED - See here for solution.

Last edited by SubGothius (2009-04-12 11:04:51)

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Best regards,
-Tye
"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is." (-Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut)