Installed 11.2 last night with KDE4. Using “Connect to other network” I could see all the private networks around, including my own.
Mine has an hidden SSID and WPA2-PSK security. Regardless of what I tried I couldn’t connect. Both BSSID and password are correct (but there was no other choice than “WPA/WPA2 personal” under security).
So I go to work today and connect to an unsecure network with a visible SSID (and a lower signal quality) without any problems.
Anything obvious I’m missing?
Maybe have a look at /var/log/NetworkManager to find out what is being reported. Post the results here for one of the gurus to have a look at.
On 11/13/2009 02:26 AM, chr ish wrote:
>
> Installed 11.2 last night with KDE4. Using “Connect to other network” I
> could see all the private networks around, including my own.
>
> Mine has an hidden SSID and WPA2-PSK security. Regardless of what I
> tried I couldn’t connect. Both BSSID and password are correct (but there
> was no other choice than “WPA/WPA2 personal” under security).
“WPA2 personal” is WPA2-PSK. It works with 11.2. I’m using it now.
> So I go to work today and connect to an unsecure network with a visible
> SSID (and a lower signal quality) without any problems.
Do you think that having a hidden SSID improves security? If so, think again.
Any “script kiddie” can find your network within seconds if you are using it. In
addition, you run the risk of additional congestion on your channel as the
person setting up a new AP might miss yours when they do a survey.
> Anything obvious I’m missing?
I think you are hitting a situation in NetworkManager that has been discussed on
their mailing list. Opinion is divided there on whether it is a bug. The option
“Connect to Other Networks” will work for connections that exist in the NM
database, but not for a new connection, or one whose encryption method has
changed. In these cases, you need to select “Manage Connections” and create a
new connection or edit the old one, whichever is appropriate.
On Fri, 2009-11-13 at 14:21 +0000, Larry Finger wrote:
…
> Do you think that having a hidden SSID improves security? If so, think again.
> Any “script kiddie” can find your network within seconds if you are using it. In
While true, it’s like saying that moving your ssh port improves things.
The truth is… it does. I’d estimate you’ll get rid of over half the
“attempts” at your wifi if you use a hidden SID. Just because it’s not
hard to scan packets and find SIDs that everyone is doing it… because
they are not. They are using much simpler tools.
> addition, you run the risk of additional congestion on your channel as the
> person setting up a new AP might miss yours when they do a survey.
Wow… let’s just throw that out altogether. How dare you imply
that the “script kiddies” are doing packet scanning to determine
hidden SIDs and then say that the true infrastructure is just too
stupid to work right… something is just messed up in your
reasoning…
I’d say that >99% of the “script kiddies” don’t try to find
hidden SIDs… and even the few that know how to do it don’t because
a “friend” is telling everyone to not make their SIDs hidden
because the corporate infrastructure is too stupid to figure
it out Might as well make things easy as possible for them…
Might as well put on a sign on your back that says “Hack me”.
Looks like you use WEP where you have to care about script kiddies. I strongly recommend to switch to WPA2 and use a secure passphrase. Then you don’t have to worry about hiding your SSID and MAC filtering.
Here’s what worked for me. I had to unhide my network’s SSID for the first connection attempt (On 11.2 with hidden SSID and WPA2). After network manager connected successfully for the first time, it had no problems connecting automatically the next time even if the SSID is hidden.
It’s worth mentioning that the kde network manager applet is a bit slow in connecting. I also don’t remember specifying in the settings anywhere that the network is hidden.
Don’t really know why the network manager applet could not connect on the first attempt when the SSID is hidden; maybe it’s a bug?
I also found I had to broadcast an SSID for the first 11.2 connect. With SSID broadcast turned off the Knetworkmanager (ver 0.9.svn1043876-2.2) Connect to Other Network “Select Wireless Network” screen shows my connection as insecure and will not manually connect to it.
I finally did find the Manage Connections->Other screen “Show Tray Icon” must be checked in order to have Knetworkmanager automatically start up the wireless when logging in (it appears it does more important stuff than just showing the icon). Since the automatic at login startup bypasses the confused WiFi manual selection screen/process that shows as insecure, it connects without a broadcast SSID.
It appears the manual selection screen needs to correctly identify the security type when no SSID is broadcast. The automatic startup has no trouble correctly identifying the security type and connecting with no SSID.
BTW, as you can tell from the version information above, I have upgraded using the KDE 11.2 repository to 4.3.3. It might have changed what I experienced than what you will get from the 11.2 distro default KDE version.
Thanks to all for the advice. Unhiding the SSID gave me access to my WLAN & router. Now all I have to do is read the other posts explaining how to get internet access. Ho hum … :\
Many thanks to all who replied to this and other threads in the forum. Here’s a summary of the solutions that worked for me -
Hidden SSID - edit /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-wlan0 and add WIRELESS_AP_SCANMODE=‘2’ AND WIRELESS_HIDDEN_SSID=‘yes’. make the SSID visible, login first time, then make the SSID invisible again.
Intel 3945ABG - disable KWalletManager, at least for networks
No internet - In NetworkManager -> Manage Connections -> Edit choose the IP Address tab then Routes (down to the right instead of Basic Settings) and uncheck both entries.
New development. I thought root didn’t have anyway to connect to my hidden ssid WiFi unless I pre-configured it while ssid is being broadcast. After doing this, setting my AP ssid back to hidden, rebooting and logging back in as root, my root “Connect To Other Networks”, “Select Wireless Network” screen showed my hidden connection signal strength and WPA2-PSK security (no signal strength showing and insecure was the expected behavior). Then logging out and back in to my user account now showed signal strength and WPA2-PSK security.
I tried rebooting and only logging into the user account. It was back to insecure. Log in as root, then out and back in as user, it displayed PA2-PSK security in user again. My hidden ssid WiFi now works and I’m tired of messing with this. However, someone else might want to try a fresh 11.2 install and creating a WiFi connection as root, without un-hiding the ssid and tell us if it worked. It appears there is some kind of complex permission problem lurking in Knetworkmanager.
I may have misunderstood the function of “Connect To Other Networks”. All it appears to do is create a WiFi connection in the data base. It doesn’t actually connect. It seems that has to done through the system tray icon by clicking on one of the WiFi networks already shown (I checked and this misunderstanding had no effect on my previous failures to connect, since the failures were on my only WiFi connection which is set to “connect automatically”).
BTW, every time I tried to enter the bssid the hidden ssid WiFi connection refused to work (yes I have the correct bssid). Even worse the bssid was persistent (KWalletManager is not enabled) and couldn’t be deleted. I had to delete the entire wireless entry and create a new one from scratch to get rid of the bssid.
My current Knetworkmanager version is now 0.9.svn1043876-3.1 after the last KDE url repo update.
I found a workaround, although I haven’t tested extensively.
Disclaimer: I disable kwallet… I don’t know if it has anything to do with it.
The solution was to configure the hidden network and then go to terminal and as root type:
iwlist wlan0 scanning essid eduroam
You can change eduroam for you hidden SSID.
After that, knetworkmanager found the network immediately.
Maybe it is not necessary to disable kwallet or to preconfigure the network…
NWM seems to have some problems with hidden SSIDs. Another way to get his fixed is to unhide the SSID, connect with NWM and then hide the SSID again.
I wanted to go from kubuntu to Suse becasue of that, but guess it’s a KDE bug…
While there a few workaroud, i need wifi to be reliable. That the kind of thing how should “just works”. Guess i’ll go back to gnome for my laptop…
I can only encorage to vote on buzilla, as well as on ubuntu’s lanchpad.
I was seeing the same problem.
I had been working around it by killing knetworkmanager and running nm-applet but then I saw this post and a similar one on a kubuntu bug report.
Just wanted to say that the solution works for me, I didn’t disable kwallet until after it asked if I wanted to use it.
For anyone using openSUSE 11.3 with this problem (hidden wireless network using WEP 128-bit ASCII password, which I did), the unhide network, create new connection, rehide network did work for me (so far :), and I was able to store the password in kwallet. Thanks!! to the posters above for figuring out a workaround.
128 bit WEP isn’t any more secure than 64 bit WEP because of the way the ciphers are implemented. It takes about 5 minutes to crack WEP. (doesn’t matter if it’s 64 or 128 bit) I highly suggest if you want a more secure network (I assume that’s why you’re using a hidden SSID) that you use WPA2.
I too had to unhide my SSID to get connected (even though my WPA credentials and SSID were correct).
Oh, and I’m using Kubuntu 10.10 64bit Desktop. Previously I was running Ubuntu 10.10 64bit Desktop and my hidden SSID wasn’t an issue. I’m guessing it is a KDE thing.