wpa supplicant problems continue - wrt54gs says pre-shared key incorrect

[Jouni Malinen]

On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 at 11:00:26PM -0500, John H. wrote:
> I don't get it, i can get on wpa linksys network at one location, but
> not my dell truemobile 2300, and now on a friend's linksys, both
> saying
>  "WPA: 4-Way HAndshake failed - pre-shared key may be incorrect"
> 
> i mean, is it possible wpa_passphrase is translating it wrong, or
> something?  on this new network, i can get on fine with windows typing
> the ascii password.
> it's a WPA personal TKIP wrt54gs setup

I would be surprised if wpa_passphrase derived the key incorrectly.
Anyway, I would not bother using wpa_passphrase unless you are using
very slow CPU. wpa_supplicant can take care of that key derivation
automatically and there is no problems with changing SSID or passphrase
and forgetting to update the PSK manually. The "pre-shared key may be
incorrect" part is just a guess. This particular case is likely caused
by something else.

Did you have any way of running a wireless sniffer to capture packets
send between the AP and the client in both a failed and successful case?
That could provide useful information in figuring out what is going on.

Another interesting test would be to verify whether wpa_supplicant can
set up the connection on Windows with the driver that worked using
another supplicant (I would guess that was with the Microsoft supplicant
that is included in WinXP). I would like to get better understanding on
whether this interoperability issue is specific to the driver or
supplicant and testing wpa_supplicant with a driver that was able to use
the AP would provide additional information for this.

Please also include debug log (with -dd on command line) whenever
reporting a failed test case with a new wlan card/driver/OS. Without it,
I don't have much information about the case.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA