Cannot associate with unencrypted networks using bcm43xx chipset (ndiswrapper driver)

I can confirm this bug with Broadcom 4306 chipset.

Looks like a wpasupplicant problem

either in wpa_supplicant, or bcm43xx.ko's wireless extensions for wpa are broken.

This is also a problem with ndiswrapper and wpasupplicant, with identical symptoms and workaround.

Same issues here with a BCM4318 on a Compaq M2101US.

Using bcm43xx driver, Network Manager won't work at all.

Using ndiswrapper, Network Manager -does- work for my WAP-encrypted network, but NOT for any public networks.

The card works fine using iwconfig manual configuration with either /etc/network/interfaces or wifi-radar with either driver, on public and encrypted networks.

I also suspect this is a wpasupplicant problem. Please let me know what I can do to help debug this issue.

I'm unable to configure my BCM4318 with wpasupplicant (public or WAP networks), but it works fine with iwconfig.

Me too, having the same problem, workaround worked for me in an HP nx6110 laptop with a BCM4306 using ndiswrapper.

Same think for me .. I can connect easily to public network..but not at all to WEP network. BCM4309 with Dapper (and KNetworkManager)

Asked about this on the networkmanager list, and got the following response:

any chance this will make it for dapper? or at least dapper-updates?

----------------------------------------
Fedora ships wpa_supplicant with a few patches that correctly set the
authentication method, for example. Perhaps ubuntu needs some of those?

http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewcvs/devel/wpa_supplicant/

Specifically:

wpa_supplicant-wep-key-fix.patch
wpa_supplicant-auth-fallback-v4.patch
wpa_supplicant-assoc-timeout.patch

never mind the noise... locally applied those 3 patches and still no luck.

Now that Dapper was released I'll try a clean install and see if that fixes it somehow

I seem to be having the same problem - I get the same behaviour described in the bug with a dell d410 with a broadcom wireless card.

I'm running a dapper build up-to-date as of May 31, 2006.

same problem with knetworkmanager with ndiswrapper 1.17 and a wg111v2 dongle (prism chipset)

works fine with suse 10.1 and knetworkmanager

same problem also with atmel + atmel_cs driver + Siemens Gigaset PC-Card 11 (worked fine with breezy, without wpa)

NetworkManager --no-daemon, shows errors like ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: Operation not supported
and fails association

Also, network-manager incorreclty calls wpa_supplicant with driver wext instead of atmel (seems that wpa_supplicant suppose that we use the atmelwlan driver from sf.net)

Laurent - can you check what patches suse is using?

I'm testing wpa_supplicant-assoc-timeout.patch from fedora right now, but I'm not sure if the adjusted timeout has any effect. I'm able to reporduce with both ndiswrapper and wext on ndiswrapper based cards.

If I had others to test on, I would. *grin*

here is the patches for NetworkManager-0.6.2-23.src.rpm

here the full lis of files :
NetworkManager-0.6.2.tar.gz
nfs
nm-0.6-branch.patch
nm-configure-networking-rml.patch
nm-debug-wpa-less-rml.patch
nm-icons.tar.gz
nm-madwifi-strength-rml.patch
nm-make-wireless-menu-item-inactive-rml.patch
nm-never-restart-nm-applet-rml.patch
nm-wireless-driver-workarounds-rml.patch

nm-wireless-driver-workarounds-rml.patch

nm-driver-workarounds.patch looks to be partially implemented in 60-rml-wpa-workarounds.patch and 20-supplicant-timeout.patch

I'll see if I can update it to something resembling the suse patch and test tonight.

From what i can see, this issue is twofold. wpa_supplicant isn't associating to open APs with ndiswrapper, and networkmanager isn't feeding the right things to wpa_supplicant. Can you post a patch listing from the suse wpa_supplicant srpm as well?

It looks like the diffs I'm going to attach are solving the problem for me. These are an integration of the SuSE patches to wpa_supplicant and network-manager, as well as some adjustments from the fedora patchset. I can post some .deb files as well if that would help with testing.

network-manager diff.gz

.dsc file to use with the diff.gz

The diff.gz for wpa_supplicant.

.dsc file to use with the diff.gz that is also attached.

Binaries for testing can be found at
http://www.sonney.com/~alchemist/ubuntu/

@Kevin

Your patch worked partially, It connected to the network but failed to fetch an IP address, so I had to manually run "sudo dhcient eth0"

hrm. I see what you mean. I'll do some further testing.

So in a couple of runs it appears I managed to conenct to my open AP once or twice, but not in a consistant fasion. In most cases, wpa_supplicant is connecting and associating properly, but doesn't seem to be signalling that is has done so? There is something very wierd going on here, and I'm going to need some time to hack at it.

with the new update it now seems to work for now

As of the release of Dapper, this works for me now too. Using the bcm43xx driver (i.e. not ndiswrapper). Thanks for fixing this! :)

with the new update it now seems to work for now

contributers state this bug was fixed. please reopen if appropriate

I'm using an ndiswrapper driver and I'm having this problem, I can't connect to unencrypted networks with network-manager-gnome.

The spinner goes on indefinitely.

I currently don't have an open network right here, but if you need the logs I can open my network and get the logs for you. I'll also try with the bcm43xx module.

the new version works with my Teledat Wlan Router and WEP but after Testing it on my Netgear104 AP the problem still is there

I have this problem with a broadcomm 4306-based wireless adapter & ndiswrapper. Using 0.6.2-0ubuntu7.

Newer Broadcom cards need new versions of ndiswrapper. Newer versions of ndiswrapper (since 1.13) also fix problems with wpa_supplicant, as long as the recommend "wext" wpa_supplicant driver is used. Network-Manager selects "ndiswrapperoblem" instead. Changing the network-manager source to remove the ndiswrapper special-case and just use "wext" fixes all problems for me.

Sorry, cut&paste error, the current network-manager selects "ndiswrapper".

still doesn't work for me using ndiswrapper 1.21 and the wpa_supplicant "wext" driver...

Same problem here on my laptop with Kubuntu Dapper, using a Broadcom BCM 4318 card with ndiswrapper. However, it works with the nativer bcm43xx kernel driver, only for the first connection (i.e. when knetworkmanager or nm-applet start) but if I close the connection and try to establish a new one with the same unencrypted access point, it fails.

Also, it is working perfectly on my second laptop, with Atheros card using the madwifi driver.

reopening, since it still doens't work w/ ndiswrapper.

I also have a BCM 4318 card in my hp nx6110. Same problem as above comment, network-manager starts with bcm43xx only once, with ndiswrapper it does not work at all. Connecting via "wpasupplicant -i wlan0 -Dwext -c/etc/wpasupplicant.conf" works fine, when after that dhclient3 is run manually, using wifi-radar also works, only network-manager can't connect.

Recompiling, deleting ndiswraper stanzas in source does not work for me.

I have the BCM4318 chipset as it comes on the Compaq Presario V2000 laptop. I'm using ndiswrapper version 1.8, I will upgrade in a few minutes to see how it goes. I attach my output. I'm able to connect to any kind of encrypted network (WAP2/WAP/WEP) but not to unencrypted networks.

I upgraded ndiswrapper from the Ubuntu Dapper version (it says 1.8, but I don't think that is correct) to the stable version from ndiswrapper website (1.23, released 2006-08-10). Still no luck with unencrypted networks.

This is the output of NetworkManager --no-daemon with wpasupplicant compiled from sources brought from edgy, version is 0.5.4-5. Still no connection to unencrypted networks.

After I upgraded to ndiswrapper 1.23 I couldn't connect to WPA encrypted or unencrypted networks anymore using network-manager. I downgraded to the ndiswrapper included on linux-image package and it's working fine again for WPA.

I have the problem as described, with "Texas Instruments ACX 111" chipset using ndiswrapper (which is to say, it is not necessarily only Broadcom chipsets). NetworkManager (or wpasupplicant) does not set essid, if I run manually "iwconfig wlan0 essid XXX" while it tries to associate, it works after that. I upgraded related packages from dapper to current edgy with no luck.

A friend of mine, with Broadcomm 4311 w/ ndiswrapper, has the same problem, too.

Hello Ubuntu team,

I managed to compare the output of NetworkManager on Fedora, where it works properly, and I found that the problem was related to a wrong wpa_supplicant driver selection made by Ubuntu's NetworkManager.

I downloaded the latest NetworkManger Ubuntu sources (network-manager_0.6.3-2ubuntu5), and I found that the patch debian/patches/10-rml-wpa-workarounds.patch is where the problem started. There's code that detects if we're using ndiswrapper and sets a wpa_driver variable to "ndiswrapper", after that it changes code where wext is hardcoded to code where it uses the value of the wpa_driver variable.

Original code (debian/patches/10-rml-wpa-workarounds.patch):

---------------------------
+ if (!strcmp (kernel_driver, "ath_pci"))
+ wpa_driver = "madwifi";
+ else if (!strcmp (kernel_driver, "ndiswrapper"))
+ wpa_driver = "ndiswrapper";
+ else
+ wpa_driver = "wext";
---------------------------

This should be rewritten like this:

---------------------------
+ if (!strcmp (kernel_driver, "ath_pci"))
+ wpa_driver = "madwifi";
+ else if (!strcmp (kernel_driver, "ndiswrapper"))
+ wpa_driver = "wext";
+ else
+ wpa_driver = "wext";
---------------------------

and there's also a line that should be changed on the next patch (debian/patches/11-j-hostap-supplicant-driver.patch). You should change the first occurrence of:

---------------------------
                wpa_driver = "ndiswrapper";
---------------------------

to:

---------------------------
                wpa_driver = "wext";
---------------------------

That way we'll be able to compile that code and make it work with the newest versions of the ndiswrapper module from the ndiswrapper website (1.23).

After this everything should work properly, either with encrypted or unencrypted networks. I recommend using ndiswrapper 1.23 from ndiswrapper website since it's more robust than the version that comes with Ubuntu's linux-image.

I'm sorry, but I'm not a developer and I don't really know how to package this properly. I'm reading the Ubuntu packaging manual. Expect fixed packages posted soon.

I posted fixed packages on my website. I'm no Ubuntu maintainer and the fixes are quite ugly, but things are currently working and you can get NetworkManager to play nicely with ndiswrapper. If you have trouble getting it to work, just grab the latest ndiswrapper from http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ . Don't be fooled, the Ubuntu ndiswrapper says it's version 1.80, but the latest upstream ndiswrapper is 1.23.

Fixed NetworkManager packages are available at:
http://www.xeno-genesis.com/archivos/network-manager-0.6.3/

Sources have been included to properly comply with GPL.

To add my 2 cents, I cannot connect to unencrypted networks even using the bcm43xx driver instead of ndiswrapper. However, once I set my network to WPA-PSK encryption and used the appropriate login, I connected immediately.

The packages from Jean Pierre Rupp in https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/42504/comments/49 worked for me w/ the ndiswrapper in edgy. I'm using edgy, currently updated.

I still see the same problems trying to connect to unencrypted networks using Jean Pierre Rupp's packages.

I have the problem described as above also. I am running a BCM94306 network card. I can connect perfectly at home (WPA2-PSK) but when I attempt to connect at school (public network) It will not connect. This is a completely fresh ubunto dapper install with all updates applied and network manager installed.

I was having the ndiswrapper instead of wext problem as well, with a rt2500 device using ndiswrapper ( The native driver wouldn't associate as well, but that's another issue). I was manually using wpa_supplicant to get around it.

jpierre's packages solved the problem.

Also, ndiswrapper worked for me in OpenSuse 10.1 as well.

If you still get problems when using my packages, just try to upgrade ndiswrapper to the latest version which can be downloaded from http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ , you'll have to manually compile and install it.

tried w/ latest ndiswrapper, still no luck.

I can confirm on a presario V2000 (Turion64), running Edgy Knot 3 64bit, that things work once I've built ndiswrapper 1.23, wireless-tools 29, and NetworkManager 0.6.4 (off the ftp.gnome.org site), all from source.

It now works for me with Jean Pierre Rupp's packages, on a Compaq Presario V2610CA with Kubuntu Dapper, using a Broadcom BCM 4318 card with ndiswrapper. Thanks a lot. Note however that it doesn't work with the native bcm43xx kernel driver, stopping at "28% configuration of peripheral".

Under Dapper, I had the same problem, only able to connect to encrypted networks. I'm using ndiswrapper/Intel neti2220 driver. I can connect to non-encrypted networkds through the standard "Network settings" dialogue.

Under Edgy, network-manager doesn't connect to any networks, encrypted or non-encrypted. It just attempts until timeout.

Since upgrade to the kernel 2.6.17-10-386, NetworkManager (up-to-date edgy) works via ndiswrapper with my card (tnet130 chipset (native (buggy for me) linux driver: acx)) where it previously did not (or did not very well - it was unable to set essid, had to be assisted manually).

There must have been some change between 2.6.17-6 and the one mentioned. Changelog mentions ndiswrapper only once, in a irrelevant way AFAIK ("ndiswrapper: fix Makefile to generate proper shell .h.cmd files").

Can someone observe the same thing?

There's a lot of confusing and unrelated info in here, but one clear point (to me, at least) is that the "wext" wpa_supplicant driver should be used with the version of ndiswrapper in Edgy, not "ndiswrapper". This was discovered by me in comment #37, rediscovered by Jean Pierre in comment #48, and helped at least some of the others. This isn't an upstream bug, as switching away from the default "wext" driver is done by debian/patches/10-rml-wpa-workarounds.patch. It is the most likely reason why upstream works just fine for e.g. comment #57.

This is known, and a patch is working its way through the queue right now.

I can confirm this for unencrypted and for encrypted networks, on dapper and edgy.

I can connect fine using

iwconfig
wpa_supplicant
dhclient

But the balls on network manager just spin forever and ever. I can't try using ndiswrapper as it's on my iBook G4.

Same problem. Latest edgy amd64.
Using ndiswrapper with broadcom 4311.
I can connect fine usinf wifi-radar but NetworkManager will not connect to anything.

On a previous comment [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/42504/comments/49] I made packages available to the Ubuntu community without the bug for Ubuntu Dapper.

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu Edgy and I'm very glad to announce that it works with the Edgy packages, I'm not using my packages anymore. I encourage people to upgrade to Edgy, unless the developers backport the fix to Dapper.

Greetings and kudos to the developers.

Sorry to the developers, but this problem seems to persist:

I'm experiences this problem with an atheros based card
04:02.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
        Subsystem: IBM Unknown device 057e
in a Thinkpad T43p. Dapper had no problems connecting to any kind of networks, but at some point through the edgy process (I was running edgy since mid July due to some problems with dapper) I was unable to connect to certain unencrypted networks.

Right now the situation is a bit weird. I can connect to any WEB/WPA encrypted WLAN, however, I can only rarely connect to an unencrypted network. The problem being here is, that the association with the access point fails, i.e. iwconfig shows simply
Access Point: not-associated

Weird is, that network-manager, kismet and so on show me the MAC-addresses of the APs, however, even trying to force the driver to associate with these, does not succeed.

Final comment, which might help: To my knowledge, I can only connect to unencrypted networks if the frequency of the AP is high (i.e. around 5 GHz), I think I have not connected to any unencrypted WLAN around 2.4 GHz.
iwconfig shows me IEEE 802.11a, but I don't recall if 5 GHZ belongs to a and 2.4 GHz to b and/or g... I necessary, I can look it up.

Any suggestions what might help? I tried going back to dapper's kernel, using wpasupplicant from curernt Debian unstable, going back to old wpasupplicant from dapper, but with any of these combinations I did not succeed in even getting connected to the network which works for edgy.

(sorry for the length)

RealMurphy: This bug is about the bcm43xx chipset using the ndiswrapper driver. You are using a completely different driver and chipset. Please file another bug.

OK, done that, sorry, I thought this to be a more generic problem.

"Me too"

System:
- kubuntu feisty
- Intel Mac Mini
- Built-in Atheros "Airport extreme"

Base station:
- Airport
- WEP40 encryption
- Other machines connect fine: Windows, Gentoo, FreeBSD, MacOSX, and even a G4 Cube w/ old-school airport card running Edgy

My Network Manager results are similar to RealMurphy's (above). It successfully scans for and identifies the AP. I click my AP and am prompted for the WEP key, which I enter in hex format. It then starts trying to associate but hangs up at 28% and disappears about a minute later having failed to associate.

Attempting to associate via iwconfig also fails in a similar fashion. A "sudo iwlist ath0 scan" finds my AP (and other nearby AP's). I select the essid and set the wep key using "sudo iwconfig ath0 essid <myessid>" and "sudo iwconfig ath0 key <my40bitwepkeyashex>", respectively. Following that, a "sudo iwconfig" still reports "Access Point: Not-Associated" and, as expected, a "sudo dhclient ath0" fails as well.

Attempting to associate via System Settings -> Network Settings fails. The ath0 interface ends up "enabled" but it's not associated and has been assigned no ip address. Presumably, it's failing silently in a similar fashion to the other methods.

Love your work, guys. Any more details I can provide, just ask.

Since this is verified as working with ndiswrapper, I'm marking this bug as closed. Ronald MacNeil and RealMurphy, please file a bug, probably against the linux-source-2.6.17 (or 2.6.20 if you can verify that it doesn't work on feisty) package.

I doubt this ever was a wpasupplicant problem; rejecting this task.

I can confirm this bug on HP/Compaq nx6125 running Dapper with latest patches.

This laptop has a Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] wireless adapter that has been configured with ndiswrapper.

Whenever my wife and I are visiting our inlaws who have an unprotected WLAN in their house the laptop will refuse to connect to the internet. The wireless indicator is on suggesting that the connection has been achieved, but the network-manager icon on the upper right corner of the screen says no connection has been established. Also the WLAN does not show up on the network-manager menu. Connection can be achieved when the following commands are given:

sudo ifconfig eth1 up
sudo dhclient eth1

After this the connection works, although network-manager still doesn't seem to be aware of it (the WLAN is still not in the menu, and the state is disconnected).

The system is running Dapper with the latest patches applied today. At home the system connects perfectly well. We are using a WEP protection there.

I can confirm that this works with my broadcomm 4306-based wireless adapter & ndiswrapper (from my comment above) with Edgy with all the current updates.

I have a similar issue with atheros chipset AR5211, it does not connect anymre to my home lan, it stops at 28%
I have also tried Suse 10.2 but I got the same behaviour!
I feel it is more generalized bug not only related bcm cards.

Well, I still cannot associate with unencrypted networks, i have ndiswrapper 1.40 installed and the wireless card works fine with encrypted networks only.
My Card type is:
Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
I have ubuntu edgy installed.
Another thing that when i tried to install jpierre packages i had a dependency problems beacause jpierre requires libdbus-1-2 and i have libdbus-1-3 which i cannot downgrade to 1-2.
Also i donot know how to use the 4 patch files posted previously.

any suggestions ?? Thanks in advance

@Fabio: Which version of Ubuntu are you using? Feisty?

I previously thought the problem had gone away since Feisty (in Feisty's current state, anyway), but I've recently had problems, again, in connecting to unencrypted networks... It may have been another, more general problem, though, as I wasn't able to try to connect to an encrypted network at the time that it was acting up.

@ Chris:
I am on kubuntu 6.10, I have downloaded also kubuntu beta live disk 7.04 but still knetwork hangs at 28% on my Atheros AR5211. On kubuntu 6.06 it used to be working flawless.

My packages are for Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake, they do not work on Ubuntu
6.10 Edgy Eft.

I haven't released any newer version of the packages because the Edgy
packages work fine on my computer.

In order for network-manager to work with this card, I installed the
ndiswrapper drivers, and I didn't use the bcm43xx module.

Greetings.

--
Jean Pierre Rupp
Xeno-Genesis
www.xeno-genesis.com

Well, i found that when i restarted ubuntu, my wireless card connected to unencrypted network at last, but when i connect to an encrypted network and try to get back to the unencrypted one it doesn't work, so i have to restart in order to connect to an unencrypted network :S.

Thanks :)

--
Sherif Gouda

@ smgouda: This sounds like it may be the problem I was seeing. I
haven't done thorough testing, however.

What happens if you try to connect to an unencrypted network twice
(i.e., connect to an encrypted network, then attempt to connect to an
unencrypted network, then attempt to connect to that same unencrypted
network again)? It seems like this may have worked for me at one point.
Also, what if you try to manually unset the key using iwconfig, from the
command line ("sudo iwconfig [device-id] key off")?

Are you using the bcm43xx driver? Or ndiswrapper? And you are on
Feisty, right?

Well, I am using ndiswrapper 1.40 and ubuntu 6.10 Edgy i am waiting for Feisty to be realesed. It seems that it now works only when i manually set the key to open
( sudo iwconfig [device-id] ESSID "[network-name]" key open" ) so it connects to unencrypted network BUT it gives this error ( Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.) i donot know why, i donot know also why it works after the error, may be it resets the interface state so it is able to connect to unencrypted networks after that.
i also tried (sudo iwconfig [device-id] key off), after that i try to associate with unencrypted network and it didn't work.

@ Sherif: Could you let me know what you find once you upgrade to Feisty?
If you're especially keen to find out, you might download the Feisty beta
and do a test from the live CD environment.

@ Sherif: You know what -- we ought to take this discussion elsewhere. This report is supposedly "fixed" and is completely littered with random reports. There's another bug report that is more-specific to our problem: bug #73759. Anyone interested: please subscribe yourself to that report.