fedora 7 wpa_supplicant/ath0 booting problems

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

"Mario Rossi" <mariofutire at googlemail.com> writes:
> So far I've understood that wpa_supplicant is responsible for setting
> the key for the interface.
> When I debug it, I just add "iwconfig" at the end of ifup-interface
> (so it prints all the parameters of the wireless interface) and I can
> tell if something went wrong.
> In normal situation, the key has to be set, only the the dhcp can work.

I have an atheros cardbus card made by ubiquiti.  Every once in a
while wpa_supplicant gets in a loop where it negotiates the key, I
very briefly see "completed" with the wpa-psk, CCMP, etc displayed in
wpa_gui.  Before I can blink the wpa_gui says DISCONNECTED and all the
vitals are cleared.  It then repeats the above forever.  The fix is
usually to do a "service wpa_supplicant restart".  Sometimes I need to
take down the ath0 interface and bring it up too.  It feels like a
timing problem where wpa_supplicant just isn't waiting long enough for
something.

BTW. I just spent an hour trying to get the network working with
wpa_supplicant started before the network code.  If I put an "exit 0"
at the start of ifup-wireless then the dhclient never got started,
even though wpa_gui shows the association exists.  Ipv6 is also up, so
the network is usable for that. I have no idea why dhclient didn't get
started.  The only thing I can guess is timing also.  I've returned to
starting wpa_supplicant from the bottom of ifup-wireless and things
are back to normal.

I guess I need to dig up the sources to wpa_supplicant and watch this
run in gdb and see if I can find the reason for the looping error.
Maybe that will shed some light on why starting order of
wpa_supplicant and the network card is so delicate.

-wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht                http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/
IPv6 on Fedora 7 http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/fedora/ipv6-tunnel.html