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thebonaestest

Member

Registered: 2016-03-20

Posts: 7

Wicd looks like it's connecting just fine, but doesn't

About 2 weeks ago I bought a refurbished HP Spectre. I'm dual booting Windows 10 and Arch Linux, and up until now everything has worked flawlessly. I've been using wicd to connect to my home network, which is secured with WPA2. My service provider is AT&T.

This morning, I woke my computer up, and all of a sudden wicd won't connect to the network. As I said, it's been working just fine for two weeks. It's acting really weird. The network (called 'Doyle-WiFi') shows up in the wicd-client menu, and when I click connect, it gives me the usual messages:

Doyle-WiFi: Disconnecting active connections...
Doyle-WiFi: Putting interface up...
Doyle-WiFi: Validating authentication...
Doyle-WiFi: Obtaining IP address...
Doyle-WiFi: Done connecting...

But it doesn't actually connect to the network, and just goes back to the default "Not connected" message.

This is similar to what happens when the network key is incorrect, but I haven't changed the password, and other (Windows) computers are connecting to the network fine.

Right now I'm connected to the internet by sharing 4G over USB from my phone, and wicd is detecting and connecting to the USB interface with no problems.

I checked /var/log/wicd/wicd.log and found this most recent entry:

2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: wicd initializing...
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: ---------------------------
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: wicd is version 1.7.4 961
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: setting backend to external
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: trying to load backend external
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: successfully loaded backend external
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: trying to load backend external
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: successfully loaded backend external
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: Automatically detected wireless interface wlo1
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: setting wireless interface wlo1
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: Couldn't detect a wired interface.
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: setting wired interface enp0s20f0u3
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: setting wpa driver wext
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: setting use global dns to False
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: setting global dns
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: global dns servers are None None None
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: domain is None
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: search domain is None
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: setting automatically reconnect when connection drops True
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: Setting dhcp client to 0
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: Wireless configuration file found...
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: Wired configuration file found...
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: chmoding configuration files 0600...
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: chowning configuration files root:root...
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: Using wireless interface...wlo1
2016/06/14 10:25:55 :: Using wired interface...enp0s20f0u3
2016/06/14 10:26:00 :: Autoconnecting...
2016/06/14 10:26:00 :: No wired connection present, attempting to autoconnect to wireless network
2016/06/14 10:26:02 :: Doyle-WiFi has no never connect value
2016/06/14 10:26:02 :: trying to automatically connect to...Doyle-WiFi
2016/06/14 10:26:02 :: Connecting to wireless network Doyle-WiFi
2016/06/14 10:26:02 :: Putting interface down
2016/06/14 10:26:02 :: Releasing DHCP leases...
2016/06/14 10:26:02 :: Setting false IP...
2016/06/14 10:26:02 :: Stopping wpa_supplicant
2016/06/14 10:26:02 :: Flushing the routing table...
2016/06/14 10:26:02 :: Putting interface up...
2016/06/14 10:26:04 :: Generating psk...
2016/06/14 10:26:04 :: Attempting to authenticate...
2016/06/14 10:26:07 :: wpa_supplicant rescan forced...
2016/06/14 10:26:08 :: Running DHCP with NO hostname
2016/06/14 10:26:11 ::
2016/06/14 10:26:11 :: DHCP connection successful
2016/06/14 10:26:11 :: not verifying
2016/06/14 10:26:11 :: Connecting thread exiting.
2016/06/14 10:26:11 :: Sending connection attempt result success
2016/06/14 10:26:32 :: Putting interface down
2016/06/14 10:26:32 :: Releasing DHCP leases...
2016/06/14 10:26:32 :: Setting false IP...
2016/06/14 10:26:32 :: Stopping wpa_supplicant
2016/06/14 10:26:32 :: Flushing the routing table...
2016/06/14 10:26:32 :: Putting interface up...
2016/06/14 10:26:34 :: Running DHCP with NO hostname
2016/06/14 10:26:42 ::
2016/06/14 10:26:42 :: DHCP connection successful
2016/06/14 10:26:42 :: Connecting thread exiting.
2016/06/14 10:26:42 :: Sending connection attempt result success

I'm not really familiar with the wicd log messages, but it looks to me like wicd thinks it's connecting to the network, but it isn't.

I tried doing a system update (sudo pacman -Syu) and then uninstalling and reinstalling wicd and wicd-client, and rebooting multiple times, but nothing has changed.

I thought maybe it was a DHCP problem, so I ran

sudo dhcpcd

and it gave the usual startup messages, suggesting it hadn't been running before... but then wicd still didn't work, and wouldn't even connect to the wired interface anymore until I rebooted.

This has me stumped, I can't even think of where to start. Any help at all is much appreciated.

thebonaestest

Member

Registered: 2016-03-20

Posts: 7

Re: Wicd looks like it's connecting just fine, but doesn't

An update:
After a few hours away from my computer, I tried again, and wicd connected. I didn't change anything... I didn't even move my computer. I have no idea what has changed.
In an experiment, I disconnected and attempted to reconnect with wpa_supplicant. It failed.

$ sudo wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlo1 -cDoyle-WiFi.prof
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: Invalid argument
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: Invalid argument
wlo1: Trying to associate with 10:05:b1:5a:89:60 (SSID='Doyle-WiFi' freq=2462 MHz)
ioctl[SIOCSIWFREQ]: Device or resource busy
wlo1: Association request to the driver failed
wlo1: Associated with 10:05:b1:5a:89:60
wlo1: WPA: Key negotiation completed with 10:05:b1:5a:89:60 [PTK=CCMP GTK=TKIP]
wlo1: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to 10:05:b1:5a:89:60 completed [id=0 id_str=]

And no internet.

However, I attempted again with wifi-menu.

sudo wifi-menu wlo1
Scanning for networks... Could not read interface p2p-dev-wlo1 flags: No such device

I thought that weird message meant it was failing, but I proceeded to connect successfully.

So what the heck? Why is this happening? And is this something I have to worry about if I can apparently rely on being able to connect... in some way?

twall

Member

Registered: 2011-04-26

Posts: 14

Re: Wicd looks like it's connecting just fine, but doesn't

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but I am experiencing the very same issue. And interestingly, I can reproduce the bug with 100% certainty, if I leave any wicd-GUI open while connecting.

So using either wicd-gtk or wicd-curses, I cannot connect to a network while the UI is running. BUT if I try to connect to a network and close the UI immediately, the connection succeeds! This boggles my mind. There must be some kind of race-condition in connection with the UI programs. Do you experience the same issue?

twall

Member

Registered: 2011-04-26

Posts: 14

Re: Wicd looks like it's connecting just fine, but doesn't

Crazy, this thing has been bugging me for months, and just now I found a solution!

I revived this old blog post from the internet archive and it pointed me in the right direction:
http://web.archive.org/web/201604301349 … d-problem/
The blog post does not really solve the problem, but found out that dhcpd is the culprit.

So the solution is to use another dhcp client (I used dhclient successfully) and the connection works everytime! And also the connection is established much faster.

# install dhclient
$ pacman -S dhclient
# restart wicd so it detects dhclient's installation
$ systemctl restart wicd

Now use the gui (wicd-gtk or wicd-curses) to select the dhclient as dhcp client in the preferences. Voila!

ldnpub

Member

Registered: 2017-12-28

Posts: 1

Re: Wicd looks like it's connecting just fine, but doesn't

@twall Thank you SOOOOOoooooo much

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,424

Website

Re: Wicd looks like it's connecting just fine, but doesn't

Don't necrobump, and don't empty post:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … ss-posting
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … mpty_posts

Closing

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