STA not found?

[Michael]

> Did you configure the WinXP Home laptop to use shared key authentication?

Oh, silly me!  Yes, the WinXP Home laptop is configured to use shared key
authentication, but fails to connect.  I can get it to work by:
1. trying to connect with shared key authentication, key entered manually
(triple-checked, it is identical to the key configured on the AP)
2. trying to connect with shared key authentication, no key entered, WinXP
checkbox "the key is provided to me automatically" is checked
3. trying to connect with open system authentication
... and then repeat 1-3 until it connects.

> This message is printed out when authentication failed and a station entry
was not added. The
> most probable cause for this is that the client tried to repeatedly use
open system

The "STA not found" messages relate to (3) above, as I could've known.
Steps (1) and (2) never leave any trace in syslog until a successful
authorisation has been achieved:

May 23 22:13:13 LinuxBox kernel: wlan0: 00:0a:0b:0c:0d:0e auth_cb -
authentication failed
May 23 22:13:13 LinuxBox kernel: wlan0: 00:0a:0b:0c:0d:0e auth (alg=0
trans#=1 stat=0 len=6 fc=00b0) ==> 13 (unsupported algorithm)


This (below) now relates to step 2(!) above, after 6 cycles through the
above process:

May 23 22:14:10 LinuxBox kernel: wlan0: 00:0a:0b:0c:0d:0e auth (alg=1
trans#=1 stat=0 len=6 fc=00b0) ==> 0 (new STA)
May 23 22:14:10 LinuxBox kernel: wlan0: 00:0a:0b:0c:0d:0e auth (alg=1
trans#=3 stat=0 len=136 fc=40b0) ==> 0 (challenge OK - authOK)
May 23 22:14:10 LinuxBox kernel: wlan0: 00:0a:0b:0c:0d:0e auth_cb - STA
authenticated
May 23 22:14:10 LinuxBox kernel: wlan0: 00:0a:0b:0c:0d:0e assoc_cb - STA
associated
May 23 22:14:14 LinuxBox dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:0a:0b:0c:0d:0e via
wlan0

Any thoughts what might be going on?



-----Original Message-----
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 10:34:02 -0700
From: Jouni Malinen <jkmaline at cc.hut.fi>
Subject: Re: STA not found?
To: hostap at shmoo.com
Message-ID: <20040523173402.GA7542 at jm.kir.nu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Sun, May 23, 2004 at 06:50:35PM +0200, Michael wrote:

> I have a WinXP Home laptop that has difficulties connecting to my WLAN 
> at home, but only with WEP enabled and requiring shared authentication 
> - open system authentication is fine.  Interestingly, several other 
> computers with WinXP Pro (and tested with Knoppix 3.4) have no such
difficulties.

Did you configure the WinXP Home laptop to use shared key authentication?

> May 23 14:05:04 LinuxBox kernel: wlan0: 00:0a:0b:0c:0d:0e auth_cb - 
> STA not found May 23 14:05:06 LinuxBox last message repeated 22 times

This message is printed out when authentication failed and a station entry
was not added. The most probable cause for this is that the client tried to
repeatedly use open system authentication. You can verify this by
uncommenting a debug entry in driver/modules/hostap_ap.c. In the end of
handle_authen() function, change "#if 0" to "#if 1" and the driver will
print out the reason for this authentication failure.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA