authentication issues - understanding reason numbers

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2010-10-06 at 22:23 +0200, Philipp wrote:
> Hi,
> I try to use wpa_supplicant but have trouble getting a connection.
> I tried multiple frontends, wicd, wifi-radar, netcfg, but to no avail,
> and now I try since some time to use wpa_supplicant directly in order to
> figure out what's wrong.
> I'm trying at two different networks, a home router with WPA-PSK and my
> university network (eduroam) with WPA-EAP (well, it's with
> identity/password for each user but without cert).
> 
> I guess the home example should be simpler, so I'll start with that.
> I tried the simple home network example and the catch-all example from
> the config manpage: http://linux.die.net/man/5/wpa_supplicant.conf
> Both configurations lead to the same output, here with the nl80211 and
> wext driver respectively:
> 
> $ sudo wpa_supplicant -Dnl80211 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0
> Trying to authenticate with 00:1f:33:b6:24:42 (SSID='effe' freq=2437
> MHz)
> Trying to associate with 00:1f:33:b6:24:42 (SSID='effe' freq=2437 MHz)
> Associated with 00:1f:33:b6:24:42
> CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=00:1f:33:b6:24:42 reason=15
> 
> $ sudo wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf                                                                            
> Trying to associate with 00:1f:33:b6:24:42 (SSID='effe' freq=2437 MHz)
> Associated with 00:1f:33:b6:24:42
> CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=00:1f:33:b6:24:42 reason=0
> 
> I couldn't figure out what the magic numbers reason=15 and reason=0
> mean, and the -d or -dd output didn't tell me what's wrong either. I'm
> pretty much out of ideas at this point.

Reason=0 means "no information given", or really that the driver didn't
pass up enough information for the supplicant to give you a reason code.
Looks like only the nl80211 driver actually has the *capability* to
provide reason codes, but that capability depends on whether you're
using nl80211 and whether the kernel you have provides those codes too.

The reason code that nl80211 provides comes directly from the 802.11
management frames.  This means that your "reason 15" would be:

4-Way handshake timed out

We'd need much more verbose debug logs to figure that out (use -dddt on
the supplicant's command line).

Dan


> Here's some information about my system:
> Arch Linux, kernel 2.6.35.7
> wpa_supplicant 0.7.3
> BCM4312 14e4:4315
> b43-firmware-4.178.10.4 (4.174.64.19)
> b43-fwcutter 013
> 
> 
> I'd really appreciate any help.
> 
> Best regards,
> Philipp
> 
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