NetworkManager Issues

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, 2004-11-02 at 10:47 -0500, Amitabha Roy wrote:
> Forcing device '/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/eth1' and
> network 'RoamAbout Default Network Name' without passphrase
> nm_device_wireless_network_exists () looking for network 'RoamAbout
> Default Network Name'...  found! (encrypted)

NetworkManager first tries to explicitly connect to the requested AP
with Shared Key mode, then unencrypted mode.  Your access point supports
shared key mode evidently, or the driver is dumb.  What chipset/driver
are you using again on your wireless card?

Here's what NetworkManager does:  it sets the card to encrypted mode,
sets a key on the card, then tries to associate with the AP.  If the
card's associated-AP MAC address is valid, then the card has a link to
the AP as reported by the associated-AP MAC address, and we call that AP
encrypted.

Can you test this?  Bring the card down, then up, and set the encryption
key to 'iwconfig eth0 key 11111111111111111111111111 restricted' then
'iwconfig eth0 essid <yours here>', then do an 'iwconfig' and paste it
here.  What is the associated AP's MAC address as reported by the card?

The problem is how do you detect that the card has
associated/authenticated with the AP?  DRIVERS DON'T REPORT THIS STUFF
RELIABLY.  The drivers, frankly, suck.  The cisco driver at least
reports FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF if it can't associate with the AP due to a bad
encryption key or whatnot.  AFAIK, Atmel cards report a valid MAC
address even if the encryption key is wrong and therefore they couldn't
possibly have associated successfully with the AP.  I've submitted a
kernel driver patch that fixes that, but of course its not in yet.

So, either the driver for your card is stupid (which most of them are),
or your access point is misconfigured, or theres an edge case I haven't
dealt with.  In later versions of NetworkManager (from CVS) I've tried
to work around that for scanned access points by grabbing the encryption
status of the AP from the scan rather than using what I detect in the
manner above.  This will show up in rawhide once rawhide is tracking
FC4, and will show up as an update to FC-3 after that as well.

Dan