wpa_supplicant fails to connect to mesh network

[Bob Copeland]

On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 12:32:43PM -0400, Bob Copeland wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 11:02:36AM -0500, Nathan Price wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 8:09 AM, Bob Copeland <me at bobcopeland.com> wrote:
> > > Are both ends running wpa_supplicant with user_mpm = 1 and same config
> > > file?
> > 
> > No, only one end is running wpa_supplicant.  The other was configured using
> > iw.
> 
> Ah, ok, that probably explains it.  I think there is an outstanding issue
> with the default rateset in wpa_s not matching that of the in-kernel
> peering manager.

Ok, I looked into this a bit more and what is happening is that:

 - basic rates have to equal each other between peers,
 - in the kernel, only 1 mbps rate is selected as a mandatory rate
   (assuming 2.4 GHz) and thus used as the basic rate set, and
 - in wpa_supplicant, the ERP mandatory rates are used for basic
   rates by default

So, this config with wpa_supplicant will probably get them talking
(worked for me):

network={
    [...]
    mesh_basic_rates=10
}

-- 
Bob Copeland %% http://bobcopeland.com/