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Stormblazer

Member

Registered: 2009-12-16

Posts: 3

Wireless association issue

I have an HP Mini 110c, which uses that pesky broadcom low power chip.
I used the git version of the firmware cutter and the latest firmware I could find, as well as using the b43 2.6.32 kernel driver.

With unencrypted connections, it seems to work fine.

The problem is when I try to do anything at all with my university's WPA2/Enterprise connection.
Setting the essid for it through iwconfig, it doesn't even appear to associate to the access point at all - which is a prerequisite for running anything else like WPA supplicant as far as I know.

iwlist wlan0 scanning turns up all the access points it should, including encrypted connections, I just can't actually do anything with the encrypted connections, even if I manually enter the access point's hardware address.

Anyone have any ideas as to what's going on?

This is what iwconfig returns if I use the unencrypted connection (which only allows a single SSL gateway page in a browser, that's what I'm posting through now).

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"csu"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:07:50:D6:17:BE   
          Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=68/70  Signal level=-42 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

if I try to use the encrypted connection, "csu-net":

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"csu-net"  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off

Says the same thing even if I manually enter an AP hardware address with iwconfig wlan0 ap <address>

I've tried it with wpa_supplicant too, though I'm unsure if I'm using it right. My school has a pretty complex encryption in place - WPA2/Enterprise, PEAP, MSCHAPv2, needs a root certificate (IPS_SALVADORES), authentication information (username and password), and uses AES encryption.

Finally, an example of what iwlist wlan0 scanning returns for csu-net:

Cell 05 - Address: 00:18:74:09:A8:61
                    Channel:11
                    Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
                    Quality=59/70  Signal level=-51 dBm  
                    Encryption key:on
                    ESSID:"csu-net"
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
                              11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
                    Bit Rates:24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Mode:Master
                    Extra:tsf=000001a6c8f0d453
                    Extra: Last beacon: 1440ms ago
                    IE: Unknown: 00076373752D6E6574
                    IE: Unknown: 010882848B0C12961824
                    IE: Unknown: 03010B
                    IE: Unknown: 2A0100
                    IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : 802.1x
                    IE: Unknown: 32043048606C
                    IE: Unknown: 851E04008C001F00FF0319004C53432D31390000000000000000000001000027
                    IE: WPA Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : 802.1x
                    IE: Unknown: DD06004096010102
                    IE: Unknown: DD050040960305
                    IE: Unknown: DD050040960B09
                    IE: Unknown: DD050040961401
                    IE: Unknown: DD180050F2020101820003A5000027A500004254BC0062436600
                    IE: Unknown: DD050050F20502

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Wireless association issue

Setting the essid for it through iwconfig, it doesn't even appear to associate to the access point at all - which is a prerequisite for running anything else like WPA supplicant as far as I know.

You've been misinformed. You can't associate with an encrypted AP without using encryption. For WPA, write an appropriate /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, bring up the interface with ifconfig and then run wpa_supplicant. When you're happy with that, there are various ways to automate it - netcfg, wicd, networkmanager, etc.

I've tried it with wpa_supplicant too, though I'm unsure if I'm using it right.

I'm unsure about that too - mainly because you didn't give any details of what you tried to do.

Stormblazer

Member

Registered: 2009-12-16

Posts: 3

Re: Wireless association issue

You've been misinformed. You can't associate with an encrypted AP without using encryption. For WPA, write an appropriate /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, bring up the interface with ifconfig and then run wpa_supplicant. When you're happy with that, there are various ways to automate it - netcfg, wicd, networkmanager, etc.

Well, I got it to associate with the AP - as you said, I had to run it through wpa_supplicant.

Unfortunately I'm now stuck on the authentication itself.
/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
update_config=1
eapol_version=1
ap_scan=1

network={
        ssid="csu-net"
        scan_ssid=1
        key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
        eap=PEAP
        identity="***"
        password="*******"
        ca_cert="/etc/ssl/certs/IPS_Servidores_root.pem"
        phase1="peaplabel=1"
        phase2="AUTH=MSCHAPV2"
        priority=1
}

It seems this configuration should be correct - there are no linux-oriented instructions from my campus, but the windows ones as for WPA2/Enterprise, AES encryption, PEAP+MSCHAPv2, the IPS_Servidores certificate, and a username/password that I supply.

There wasn't an explicit error, it simply failed to work - dhcpcd times out, and ping is unresponsive.
Running the status command through wpa_cli seemed to indicate a possible failure might be in the PEAP aspect, but as I'm not on campus right now I don't have the exact error on hand (will update tomorrow with the exact error).