Success! Broadcom Wireless Connection Through WPA2

[Favux]

Hi rvgsd,

I'd go ahead and remove wpa_supplicant reboot and then reinstall it and reboot. Is your SSID on? NM can have trouble if it's hidden.

That's about the end of my advice. The demo is about a "trick" using gconf to get around some problems with NM's algorithms. You need a wireless guru, there are several out there who maintain threads. Like kevdog above and wiemanO1.

Sorry. Good luck! Hang in there, it took me at least four weeks to find this fix. Tethered by an ethernet cable the whole time.

[tad1073]

do you know if this will work with 9.04?

I tried and had to add:

group       [tkip]
pairwise    [tkip]
proto       [wpa]

those three keys.

by the way, my wireless card uses ath9k driver from madwifi

here is my post about my prblems
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1139001&page=3

[Favux]

Hi tad1073,

I'm not sure. I don't think anyone with Jaunty has posted a success yet. NM hasn't changed that much I don't think. It's gone from the unofficial 0.70 they were using in Intrepid to the official final 0.70. Or maybe they updated it a little since the alphas.

But the rest of the infrastructure has changed some. For example Gnome is updated.

So if you have the same problem I had with NM constantly asking you for the password and returning hex in the password box and when you use gconf editor you find similar entries to the ones I (and the other posters) found it should work.

[tad1073]

NM constantly asking you for the password and returning hex in the password box

Yes

I think it is my router though. I had a D-Link router but it died. The new router is a Linksys WRT160n which is g+n.

I have it running in mixed mode

[Favux]

Hi tad1073,

I'm sure you noticed we have the same/similar router. I don't think it's in mixed mode though, just n. Different wifi chipset though. In my case the NM algorithm was choking on ccmp in the group key. Once I removed that with gconf editor the Broadcom chipset was able to connect to the Linksys router. So I never tried adding keys, just subtracting entries from them.

[tad1073]

I guess it is my card then. AR5008 driver for a d-link dwa-552 wireless b+g+n

[AJack10600]

Hm... this is pretty much how my problem looks.... but can it be a router problem when it works fine with my Windows PC ?

When using NM in Ubuntu 9.04 get exactly what you subscribe, I get promted again and again for a Key for the WLan and when I go to see key I see massive Hex code in there.. where does that come from ? What and who generates it?

It clearly prevents any connection to the Router... this is silly especially since this problem seems to be pretty old ... if it's been around since release 8 ...

[Favux]

Hi AJack10600,

I assume the hex hash is coming from the Message Digest algorithm 5 (MD5) of the password. I think MD5 is in common use in the distributions.

Does your router have hidden ESSID like mine did? I found a link to some new patches for Broadcom to handle hidden ESSID the other day. I haven't looked at them at all. Ayuthia found them and describes them on posts #7 and #9 here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1187656 Maybe they will be of some use to you.

Good luck!

[ewanaunf6]

Note: Bug reported fixed! for NM 0.8 in Karmic per Tony Espy (9-7-09): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/377643 They will try to make NM 0.8 available for Jaunty via the Network Manager PPA. No mention of Intrepid.This solution was suggested by flatline (and Geof) at:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1009180[/url]Then flatline cross-posted on this thread:  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=963379&page=10post #97 and I answered starting post #100.

Broadcom BCM 4328 a/b/g/draft-n Wi-Fi Adaptor connected through WPA2 TKIP to a Linksys Wireless-N Router WRT160N using Broadcom proprietary "wl" driver (in Hardware Drivers: Broadcom STA wireless driver).For the first time since updating to Intrepid I have wireless!I'm am one of those experiencing the password box filled with hex after a connection attempt through NetworkManager using WPA2-TKIP encryption. Then over and over again NetworkManager asks for a password and reconnection. I had decided this was a wpa_supplicant certificate issue (and was hoping for a network manager update that would fix it). But it is not. I went to gconf editor Applications>System Tools>Configuration Editor. Then I went to system>networking>connections>1>802-11-wireless-security.There I saw:[code]I edited it to look like:[code]And tried to connect, and it did! I rebooted and tried to connect again. And it did. I guessed at the parameters, knowing what I had set up in my router.I right clicked on the NetworkManager applet and went to Edit Connections. I then deleted a duplicate entry and checked the box for automatically connect, since the connection now worked again. I rebooted and the connection failed. Again the password box filled with hex. Again the asking for a password and reconnection. I went back to Gconf editor and found:[code]I again started editing, and after correcting the second line it automatically connected and so I was left with:Code:[code]I rebooted and it connected automatically and flawlessly.Think about it for a minute. Just going into Edit Connections and checking the auto-connect box was enough for NetworkManager to re-add the extraneous, and some clearly erroneous, entries.So as long as I don't use NetworkManager to edit connections I'm good to go? I suppose I could experiment further and find out just which of the extraneous entries are the erroneous ones.Inspired by the Launchpad bug #78181: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ger/+bug/78181 (Pay particular attention to the posts by manu and Loye Young towards the bottom. Also see bug link by Loye Young: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ta/+bug/192258 (Note: Avahi-autoipd & avahi-etc. along with ifupdown were installed on my system. But dhcdbd (available) and dhclient (not available) were not installed on my system.)) I decided to see if I could narrow down the "erroneous" entries. "Erroneous" at least in my case. Thanks to manu my prime suspect was CCMP.I right clicked on the NetworkManager applet and went to Edit Connections. I then selected edit of my wireless connection. I did not change anything, just clicked on OK. I turned off wireless in NM and then turned it back on and the connection failed. Again the password box filled with hex. Again the asking for a password and reconnection.I went to gconf editor Applications>System Tools>Configuration Editor. Then I went to system>networking>connections>1>802-11-wireless-security. There I found:[code]Looks familiar, hmm? So I went to the first line and removed ccmp. Lo and behold the keys mutated into:

group       [wep40,wep104,tkip]key-mgmt    wpa-pskname        802-11-wireless-securitypairwise    [tkip,ccmp]proto       [wpa,rsn]wep-tx-key-idx

and wireless connection was made! So I rebooted. Again wireless connected automatically. I went to gconf editor again and found:[code]So deleting ccmp from the group key seems to be the minimum necessary step, at least for me.In Gconf editor if you right click on a key there are several options. Among them are "set as default" and "set as mandatory". If one of these two options was selected for the keys that NetworkManager is messing up would this prevent it? In other words could one or the other of these settings block NetworkManager from altering the key? If so which one?David-emm on this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1018168 tried setting the keys in Gconf to "default" and "mandatory". Unfortunately it was a no go. Intrepid/NM objected to his attempts. At this point bab1 joined us and pointed to: http://www.arachnoid.com/linux/Netwo...ger/index.html At this URL Paul Lutus goes through an explanation of NM's architecture and rationale (distribution agnostic). bab1 then explains that NM is not very flexible at this point and it's algorithm (creating values "on the fly" from HAL and dBus inputs) doesn't accept all user input.The upshot, for us, of all this is that this workaround using Gconf editor is the best we're going to do for now. We will have to wait for another version of NM that is more flexible and accepts more user input. Maybe inputs through dBus editing? We may be waiting a while.Addendum 1:For those of you who's issues look more like timing issues, check out this bug report:https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/263963At the bottom, Alexander Sack points you to the latest NM PPA packages (0.7 final) that address some driver timing issues at:https://edge.launchpad.net/~network-manager/+archiveAddendum 2:I feel compelled to report other strange behavior I have observed. This may bear on the fundamental problem of networkmanager and be related to the bug reports above. After the system is up a while I can no longer grep useful information from dmesg. Instead dmesg in a terminal yields:[code]going on and on and filling terminal. Looking in System Log shows the same thing filling both kern.log and syslog. You get to watch the output into them real time. A treat. No idea what's causing this behavior. Wireless is working fine.Addendum 3:As juanhm correctly points out there are additional conditions I neglected to mention: juanhm's bug link:https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/263963Bug closed with status changed to: Won't Fix. New bug report opened. The link:https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/377643Note: Vista says it's a Broadcom 4321AG a/b/g/draft-n Wi-Fi Adaptor.

Thanks for your explanation! It's very detailed, Now I got it.