GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 681163
Network Manager won't maintain a WLAN connection when wicd will
Last modified: 2013-01-15 15:51:56 UTC
Hi there, I've been using network-manager as controlled by gnome-shell for a while, and when I would sit in Washington Square Park trying to be on the NYU wireless (WPA2 Enterprise/PEAP/MSCHAPv2), the connection would always drop after about a minute. Even worse, Gnome-shell would make me painfully aware of this fact by cycling messages of "failed connection", "trying to reconnect", "please reenter your credentials", "no, wait, please enter your password first before we'll let you reenter your credentials". It was a terrible experience, and puzzling, too, because I remember this working without a hitch, for hours on end. After suspecting all sorts of stuff, including hardware gone bad, what prompted me to log this bug is that wicd appears to be able to maintain a connection indefinitely (or at least for *much* longer than nm). Confusingly, NM does just fine in other locations, on the same network--those are all inside buildings, with strong(er) signal. I'm using this network controller: 03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6205 (rev 34) Here's a typical iwconfig output: wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"nyu" Mode:Managed Frequency:5.18 GHz Access Point: 1C:AA:07:6F:C8:CF Bit Rate=6 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=31/70 Signal level=-79 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:4 Invalid misc:21 Missed beacon:0 NM's problems maintaining a connection may be related to trying to roam to a different AP, I'm not sure. This bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/548992 is full of people with similar issues. I'm also attaching Debian's network-manager bug report template. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks, Andreas
Created attachment 220289 [details] Debian-generated software info
I'm afraid we can't provide any help if we don't have enough information from the log files. To do *anything*, we need at least either: 1) the reason why it thinks it failed It may be seen in /var/log/messages (or similar) or it may be only visible in the debug. https://live.gnome.org/NetworkManager/Debugging 2) the difference between the behaviour of NetworkManager and wicd (e.g. if they both use wpa_supplicant, it would be just a matter of comparing wpa_supplicant configuration from NM and from wicd). If you can't re-test it somewhere, it would be fine. Otherwise I'm afraid I'll have to close it and wait for a bug report with enough information. > NM's problems maintaining a connection may be related to trying to roam to a > different AP, I'm not sure. It could be the case.
Created attachment 225111 [details] marked-up syslog Hi there, I've collected the debug log as you requested. The curious thing is that at 18:50:24, NM seems to disconnect on its own, after having previously reached the "associated" state. Curiously, the UI seems to be missing the memo and continues to show "Connecting...". This is all very weird. I'd much appreciate any help. Andreas
Thanks for the logs. I'll try to poke others as I'm not that into wireless. But it doesn't seem that NM wanted to disconnect, 'by local choice' might be just as well that wpa_supplicant dit it.
(In reply to comment #3) > Created an attachment (id=225111) [details] > marked-up syslog > It appears to be a kernel/driver problem. Sep 24 18:50:04 ding kernel: [176097.482530] WARNING: at /build/buildd-linux_3.5.2-1~experimental.1-amd64-bLqIZ_/linux-3.5.2/net/wireless/mlme.c:491 cfg80211_mlme_disassoc+0x92/0x108 [cfg80211]() Do you still experience issues with new kernel/NM?
I'm sorry to say I can only reproduce this issue in the summer, when I'm able to sit in the park long enough without freezing to death. Feel free to close this bug for now, I'll dig it up in the summer if I still need it.
OK, keep yourself in warm and hope the bug is away :)