wpa_supplicant fails and reports weird AP address in association

[Jouni Malinen]

On Tue, Dec 12, 2006 at 07:53:40AM -0500, Dan Williams wrote:

> Is it really something with quotes?  First, try using the
> 'wpa-passhprase' tool or copy the actual _hex_ key from your AP's
> configuration screen, and paste it into your wpa_supplicant
> configuration like so:
> 
> 	psk=11bbccddeeff223399...

This may be quite confusing instruction to give.. I would expect most
users of WPA-Personal to configure the key as an ASCII passphrase, not
as 64 character hex string..

> i.e., _don't_ use quotes, and use the hexadecimal key rather than using
> quotes here.  If you use quotes, wpa_supplicant interprets the config
> option as a string, which clearly isn't what you want here.  And I don't
> believe that wpa_supplicant supports passphrase hashing for WPA
> internally, that's what wpa-passphrase is for.

Clearly, the configuration was indeed trying to use a string and I would
expect that was the desired configuration in this case. Like Bryan
already mentioned, wpa_supplicant does indeed support passphrase hashing
for WPA PSK (and always has supported).

There is only one use for wpa_passphrase and that is to minimize the
startup time by removing the need to derive the key again every time.
However, taken into account the speed of most modern CPUs, there is
almost no cases where I would recommend wpa_passphrase to be used. It
is just much easier to use the ASCII passphrase in the configuration.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA