madwifi with WPA worked in 10.3, not in 11.0

I have an AR5212 card in Thinkpad T41.
Wireless with WPA (personal) worked in 10.3 OK right from the beginnig i.e. after adding the madwifi-repository.
But not with 11.0. I have reloaded madwifi packed several times, no help.
Wireless with WEP works OK in 11.0. ath5k is blacklisted, no show.
All the settings (Yast) are same in 10.3 and 11.0.
What to look?
wpa_supplicant seems different; should I compile it?

Jouni

PS. Thinkpad’s own iw2100-card works with WPA in openSUSE 11.0!!!
So, it is somehow related to madwifi?

Jouni

I find this to be a solution for my case.

  1. uninstall madwifi
  2. go to snapshots.madwifi.org and download latest version
  3. install it (make + make install)
  4. modprobe ath_pci
  5. reboot

then try to setup wpa_supplicant.

I do not know, but I presume you have made wpa_supplicant.conf properly.

Removed the old one and compiled a new madwifi; no change.
Yast puts wpa_supplicant-ath0.conf to /var/run/; looks ok.
‘/etc/init.d/network restart’ makes no connection.
Tried ‘wpa_supplicant’-command as per man-page (+ dhcpcd ath0), no success. (Not sure what commands I should give if making a connection manually.)
No tricks in the sleeve anymore to try!
WEP works and ‘iwlist ath0 scan’ shows the ‘ssid’ requiring WPA.
I noticed that in 10.3 I had to start ‘kwalletmanager’ to enable the connection, in 11.0 no request; could it be some authorization problem? I have been trying to make the connection as ‘root’.
What command output for the gurus would be usefull in this case?

Jouni

nono… forget the wpa_supplicant.ath0 in /var/run
this is created in runtime.

do… #> ifdown ath0
go to /etc/wpa_supplicant and edit wpa_supplicant.conf

do something like this


ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
eapol_version=1
ap_scan=1
network={
	ssid="YOUR_NETWORK_NAME"
	scan_ssid=1
	proto=RSN  #this is for WPA2, use proto=WPA for wpa personal
	pairwise=CCMP TKIP #this is for WPA2, use or CCMP (aes) or TKIP
	key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
	psk="YOUR_PASSWORD"
}

when done, (ath0 is still down) do
#> wpa_supplicant -Dmadwifi -iath0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

that would do…
post results.

It works now!!!
Your instruction showed a block dot in my view field; I have been reading the madwifi instruction pages numerous times but never seen an error in my script, instead of -Dmadwifi i was sticking on -Dwext which is used with my ipw2100 (a slower card).
Many thanks for your patient instructing.

Above leaves a question open what is wrong with ‘yast’-script as it do not seem to work? Or is this candy saved for 11.1?
I think, I found the reason; if you try to start wlan by pulling card out and inserting it back you should get a connection but no show. If you run ‘ps aux’ you will find that the script ‘yast’ has been using contains -Dwext!!! That was fooling me also. Somebody managing error reporting to openSUSE should give a hint them?
Second possible reason for a failed connection initiating seems to be AP (ADSL modem) related and my be different with different
boxes. In my case I have to reset the AP-box after every failed attempt i.e. to pull power line out for a moment. After that the ‘manual’ start seems to success every time. Hope this saves the nerves of some poor soul.

de Jouni

Correction:

Run: ‘/etc/init.d/network restart’ and ‘ps aux’ and you will see ‘-Dwext’ in ‘wpa_supplicant’-command.

Regret erroneous information.

de Jouni

Following modification makes ‘yast’-scripts to start my Atheros-card connection:
in ‘/etc/sysconfig/network/scripts/ifup-wireless’ modify the shown part (close to end of the script) by replacing ‘wext’ with ‘madwifi’,i.e. to be:

case $ACTION in
up)
case “${DRIVER}” in
ath_pci)
WPA_DRIVER=madwifi
;;

de Jouni