Ubuntu
network-manager package

Network Manager fails to connect to, or create a wireless connection for, an all-numeric SSID

Bug #824260 reported by John S. Gruber on 2011-08-11

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #874328: numeric SSID becomes "e" on the connection. Edit Remove

6

This bug affects 1 person

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	network-manager (Ubuntu)	Triaged	Medium	Unassigned

Bug Description

Could not connect to an all-numeric SSID, or create a connection for one (it would disappear from the list of created wireless connections immediately).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: network-manager 0.8.9997+git.20110721t045648.36db194-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-7.9-generic 3.0.0
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-7-generic i686
Architecture: i386
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
CasperVersion: 1.277
Date: Thu Aug 11 01:25:32 2011
IfupdownConfig:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
IpRoute:
default via 192.168.1.1 dev wlan0 proto static
192.168.1.0/24 dev wlan0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.33 metric 2
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Alpha i386 (20110808)
NetworkManager.state:
[main]
NetworkingEnabled=true
WirelessEnabled=true
WWANEnabled=true
WimaxEnabled=true
ProcEnviron:
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
RfKill:
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
SourcePackage: network-manager
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

Tags:

Revision history for this message

John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) wrote on 2011-08-11:

#1

Dependencies.txt Edit (2.4 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
IpAddr.txt Edit (776 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
IwConfig.txt Edit (519 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
NetDevice.eth0.txt Edit (550 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
NetDevice.lo.txt Edit (177 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
NetDevice.wlan0.txt Edit (565 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
PciNetwork.txt Edit (1.4 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
WifiSyslog.txt Edit (228.1 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")

Revision history for this message

John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) wrote on 2011-08-11:

#2

Messages in syslog:
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> Activation (wlan0) starting connection '920'
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: disconnected -> prepare (reason 'none') [30 40 0]
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled...
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started...
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) scheduled...
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete.
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) starting...
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: prepare -> config (reason 'none') [40 50 0]
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> Activation (wlan0/wireless): access point '920' has security, but secrets are required.
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: config -> need-auth (reason 'none') [50 60 0]
Aug 11 01:13:03 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) complete.
Aug 11 01:13:04 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: get_uchar_array: 802-11-wireless / ssid ignoring invalid byte element '920' (not between 0 and 255 inclusive)
Aug 11 01:13:04 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: ssid_parser: ignoring invalid SSID for 802-11-wireless / ssid
Aug 11 01:13:04 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: keyfile: error: invalid or missing connection property 'ssid'
Aug 11 01:13:04 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: need-auth -> disconnected (reason 'connection-removed') [60 30 38]
Aug 11 01:13:04 ubuntu NetworkManager[1708]: <info> (wlan0): deactivating device (reason: 38).

Revision history for this message

John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) wrote on 2011-08-11:

#3

I should have added, just changing the SSID to N920 allowed the wireless connection to be made.

Revision history for this message

brncsk (adam-barancsuk) wrote on 2011-09-20:

#4

I also bumped into this one today. Looking at the code revealed the bug is in get_uchar_array() (src/settings/plugins/keyfile/reader.c, line 733). Besides SSIDs stored as normal strings, the function also has code for reading SSIDs in the form of a semicolon-separated list of integers (the "old format" as the comment refers to it). So when the function encounters an all-numeric SSID, it tries to parse it as if it was in this "old format". This inevitably fails for integers greater than 255 and would report a single-char SSID for lower values which isn't exactly correct either. I'm not really into the key-value file parser in glib but I don't think there's a good way to distinguish between these two cases.

Revision history for this message

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox) wrote on 2011-09-22:

#5

Great analysis by brncsk; we'll just need to figure a way to fix this properly. For now, I'm keeping this unassigned.

My guess is that if the whole string has to semicolons, then we should probably skip the old format parser completely; but I haven't looked at the code yet ;)

Changed in network-manager (Ubuntu):
status:	New → Triaged
importance:	Undecided → Medium

Revision history for this message

Andrew Rufkahr (andrewjr911) wrote on 2011-09-22:

#6

A good work around right now is a) rename your ssid, or b) go into the connection information and edit the ssid manually and set it to autoconnect.

Revision history for this message

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox) wrote on 2011-10-14:

#7

This has been fixed upstream now; so I'll mark this bug as a duplicate of 874328 which covers pretty much the same problem.

Report a bug

This report contains Public information

Everyone can see this information.

Duplicate of bug #874328 Remove

You are

Subscribing...

Edit bug mail

Other bug subscribers

Bug attachments

Add attachment

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.